Here’s a little secret that Fox News does not get about renewable energy.
The image climate deniers would like to promote of the typical electric car/solar roof customer is that of the sandal wearing, tofu eating, lefty, socialist, green weenie. In fact, a good part of the early adopters are going to be from precisely the opposite end of the political spectrum. One of the major appeals of distributed generation, and the idea of producing one’s own energy, is the deeply embedded dislike and distrust Americans have for big business, big government, and big energy.
Tell the most hard core, right wing Tea Party member that there’s a way he or she can make their household more energy independent – more able to weather storms, blackouts, brownouts, or even terrorist attacks in a world of asymmetrical warfare, and they want to know more. This demographic is actually larger than the stereotypical green consumer.
Nissan is going to prove this with a new product rollout.
Nissan has announced that its Japanese customers will now start receiving Leaf-based EV Power Stations with the capability of powering a home for a couple of days — that’s on top of its ability to keep your car charged for travel of up to 100 miles.
The new EV Power Station can supply 6kWh of energy to a home, which should keep it running for about two days, depending on usage. The new Power Station also features the ability to charge your Leaf vehicle faster, hitting an 80 percent full charge in four hours. That’s about half the time it takes to charge the care using one of the current Power Stations.
This unique capability has two main uses. The first is that in an emergency situation, the car can be used as a power source for the home. Nichicon says that in this situation, the car’s high-capacity battery is capable of powering a “typical household” for up to two days. Though what constitues a typical household is unclear, even some protection from prolonged blackouts is useful.
More interesting is the charger’s ability to keep the Leaf connected to the power grid as a power source. In this scenario, the charging station recharges the vehicle at night when demand for power is lower, and draws some power from the vehicle during the day when demand for power peaks. This could not only help lower electricity bills for a household, but could also improve efficiency across the grid.
Power companies could probably reap large savings, by giving people access to spot power rates who are interconnected with such systems, skimming on the buy/sell price like currency exchange vendors do. This would be a free market solution to distributed power generation and could spur massive investment and de–carbonization for little cost.