Using a battery to substitute for the grid at night is crazy - the grid has too much capacity at night.

Using a battery to buffer excess daytime solar makes some sense, IF the car is parked at home.

Using a battery to feed power into the grid at 5 - 7pm (or whenever your daily peak is) makes sense, IF the car is parked at home.

However, many (most ?) people are not at home by 5.30 pm, and so all this is lost.

If you want to have PV power, you either need to sell the excess back to the grid, or charge a stationary battery that does not keep going to the shops or to work. This could be a cheaper, heavier lead or NiMh battery - there is no need to make it light or shockproof.

Using a E-car to buffer night time electricity makes sense, as does charging when there is excess wind.

The silly thing is to mix solar charging with EV charging - they are completly separate tasks and should NOT be linked.

It is good marketing, but "arts graduate" thinking.

Each one, separately is fine, combining them creates complexity and no synergy.

The BEV will help speed the transition away from centralized grids and all their significant weaknesses. With the advent of low cost, low temp electrolyzing, Residential P*wer Units will gradually replace inefficient, non-renewable grid segments. Charging at home from RPU supplemented by roof PV will bring the cost of energy far below grid rates (after amortization.) Further, RPU greatly enhance national security, reduce emissions, and require zero fossil fuel.

This idealized schematic shows one major idea: Japanese recognize the decoupling from the grid that is on the way. Grid and large utility operators have got to accept that the day of big energy is over - not just for oil producers - but for big hydro, coal, diesel, and outdated nuclear. Although any non-fossil fuel has a role to play in our energy future - the biggest (and most difficult to accept)change will be the decoupling from grid.

In the end the national security enhancement will more than justify the huge shift in energy resources. But, the technology is here for low cost energy from abundant resources (like seawater.) Part of our sustainable future is to sustain our growth to new, abundant energy - eliminating need for centralized monopolies. On the very positive side is an entire new energy revolution with hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and lower cost, higher standards of living, NOT limited to industrialized nations.

The guy on the block with a new PHEV who buys no gas for six months will only be outdone by the guy who charges his new PHEV from an H2-fired genset or PV roof array. They can brag they pay no-one for energy.

This seems like it would work well once ultra capacitors replace batteries or quick charging batteries with greater recharging cycles come along. Right now I wouldn't want to use all my battery every night and not have it in the morning. I also dont want to discharge my battery when I need it for driving and shorten its lifespan.

Tiny typo: it's not "Sterling" engines, but "Stirling" engines.

They're very efficient, for sure, but rather costly.

Should energy be considered another form of legal tender just like EU or US dollars, the difference being much more hour by hour variability (from 5 cents/Kwh to 25 cents/Kwh within the same day)

Whoever has energy for sale at the right time could sell it for top price. However, whoever requires energy during peak demand periods should be prepared to pay much more for it.

That's what free market and supply and demand is all about.

Intelligent metering would keep a record of all incoming and outgoing energy and keep you fully informed.

To reduce your energy cost you may elect to use public transport during peak hours and sell the unused energy at top price. etc.

Should energy be considered another form of legal tender just like EU or US dollars, the difference being much more hour by hour variability (from 5 cents/Kwh to 25 cents/Kwh within the same day)

Whoever has energy for sale at the right time could sell it for top price. However, whoever requires energy during peak demand periods should be prepared to pay much more for it.

That's what free market and supply and demand is all about.

Intelligent metering would keep a record of all incoming and outgoing energy and keep you fully informed.

To reduce your energy cost you may elect to use public transport during peak hours and sell the unused energy at top price. etc.

"Using a battery to substitute for the grid at night is crazy - the grid has too much capacity at night."

It's a solution in search of a problem.

Seems like a "let's do it approach" with hints to looking more closely at a mix of options.

Some ideas seem a bit funny, ie becoming greener by buying a second vehicle.
The article describes the 'possibility' of improving economics if the battery can feed V2H.

The wind charging signal is interesting, I wonder if the wind may be a 'subscription ' arrangement with the objective of being able to say "yep wind powered." This would suit quite a number of people who wish to know that heir vehicle actually uses renewable supplied grid energy. They can then say carbon free nuclear free.

Mitsubishi and friends will gain useful insight into the realities of electrical supply possibilities, not just through a city sized grid.
Mitsubishi may also plan on being a one stop shop proving a whole service for their customers.
Mitsubishi brands are well known in many consumer and electronics areas.
Plenty of areas in developing Asia lack reliable grids and if I understand correctly, dont plan to develop along that path anyway.
Integrating renewables is a viable option in these areas with easier economics than the current standard of large infrastructure as per older designs.

Renewable is a word used to falsely imply good or better very much like Natural. Hurricanes and typhoons and volcanoes and earthquakes are natural and renewable.

It must be remembered that to generate a kilowatt-hour with a stirling engine requires full sunlight on four square meters of area with an efficiency of 25% for a full hour. It is not likely that the equipment for doing that can generate it at a price less than that of local nuclear power. The use of batteries to store the energy, increases the unit cost of the electricity by a factor of at least two. The sun does not provide any power at night and very little power during some of the day. so much of the capital cost of the collector is wasted.

When it comes to raw fuel cost, nuclear power is almost free, but because of capital and other expenses, the electricity costs ten times as much as the fuel costs. Nuclear heat energy collectors are very small compared to solar.

When it come to solar costs the fuel is almost free as well, but nobody considers the price of land area as a capital cost and the land is not renewable. Only a limited amount of solar energy comes with the land. Two solar collectors cannot cover the same area. Two windmills cannot use the same spot for wind.

The expense of solar power must not only include the solar generator but also the cost of providing the power when it is needed. The same must also be said for windpower. Eventually flow batteries may the best means of storing wind and solar electricity. VRB flow batteries are much more efficient than hydrogen.

Much more energy would be saved and CO2 release would be prevented if the money were spent to install Capstone turbines in large buildings and Honda units in small buildings for combined-heat-power units. The cars and all cars should be Plug-in-Hybrids to destroy, at least, any concept of limited range but also to save fuel. With available lead-acid batteries at reasonable prices, both buildings and homes can transition away from the electric grid if there is gas service, but in the interest of reducing carbon dioxide release, it may be better to have grid supplied nuclear power. ZEBRA batteries could last the life of the home without maintenance.

The new grid should be built with direct-current high voltage transmission cables underground. Each home would receive Direct Current at about 300 volts. Inverters at each home would change the power to more standard forms, but Air conditioners and water heaters can use the power as delivered.

Most cars are bought because of the artistic merits of paint and style and horsepower but not for economy. The same is true of every solar installation where there is grid power. The high efficiency of Stirling engines might increase the cost effectiveness over solar cells but this has yet to be proven. I would buy a 1kw solar stirling machine just to have one after waiting for more than thirty years after they were proposed.

The use of combined heat and power should be mandated and it will save more fuel and lower CO2 releases at less cost than any combination of renewable energy except hydro. ..HG..

Huge cost reductions will be needed to make the combination of home micro-energy and electric cars affordable. Perhaps separate home batteries and car batteries are needed that can be either physically swapped or that can quickly transfer charge. If every home/car combination generated say 20 kwh a day and kept an equivalent amount in storage the need for central baseload power could be reduced. In which case the utilities should help homeowners pay for it.

I think this might work for a small world population where everybody was rich. I don't see how to get there from here.

@ Henry,

In California certain suppliers are talking about Stirling engine based CSP already being cheaper than coal. As for land costs, desert is cheap.

@ Henry

You're really only looking at one side of the debate:

You didn't mention that once you build a nuke plant on a site, you can't build anything else on that site either... right? And if anything goes wrong you can't build anything on that site for 10,000s of years.

In contrast, there are already thousands of square miles of rooftops that serve no purpose other than keeping sun and rain out of houses. So you can put up a PV arrays where there is something else built already. That also saves the infrastructural costs and transmission losses of getting electrons from the nuke plant to your house.

And large scale wind can be put up on farmland with virtually no impact on the utility of the land (the footprint of each tower is about 40' diameter, and they're spaced about 1/2 mile or more apart). In the ocean, windmills actually cause an increase in the productivity of fisheries due to the 'artificial reef' effect of their pilings.

The cost of providing nuclear power should also include the cost of insuring the nuke plant against accidents. This insurance in currently carried by the federal government because no insurance companies would take it. It should also include the cost of disposing of 'spent' fuel, which is currently largely just piled up in metal drums ... drums that will have rusted to powder LONG before the 'spent' fuel ceases to be dangerous. How much was Yucca Mountain up to?

And in terms of load-following, please don't believe that the output of nuclear plants can be ramped up and down in response to changes in demand. That role is accomplished with gas-turbine plants, diesel generators, or hydro. So if you want to include the cost of load-following for wind and solar, you could do the same for nuke.

Let's say that I have my 10' x 20' 3000 watt solar car port. I can be charging a second battery pack while I am using my car during the day. When I get home, the packs are swapped and I start over the next morning with a fresh charge. The sun allows me to go 50 miles per day with no pollution.

sjc:

Alternatively, you could transfer the energy from your home to your car battery pack very quickly thru the proper connection.

Wireless connection for power transfer may even make it easier.

I would actually put the panels on my back patio and do grid tie, then charge my PHEV at night. I just wanted to show an off grid example for illustration.

Nuclear fuel costs are not free. According to the EIA, they represent about 2/5 or 3/5 of the production cost of electricity. I can't remember which.

This is an interesting idea. If enough renewable power is created especially solar that there is a surplus during the day, then that surplus can be used to charge cars at business for a return trip to the home. At home, with solar power decreasing, the plug in cars can help with the return home peaking usage. At night, when usage drops, cars can be recharged with whatever wind and baseline extra power there is that doesn't get stored in large scale storage like pumped storage. Of course it would be hard on batteries but otherwise would tend to lower need for high cost baseline generation.