Nissan and Showa Shell partner to test solar quick charge system
2010 Nissan Leaf EV - Click above for high-res image gallery
Nissan is preparing to make a major push, starting next year, with its new LEAF EV and the ability to quick charge it is one of the primary selling points. However, doing 480V charging on a wide scale is problematic. First of all, there are almost no such charging stations in existence today. Secondly, the presence of public charging stations pulling down high voltage current like that would put a significant load on the grid.
In an effort to address these potential problems proactively, Nissan is partnering with Showa Shell to test that company's latest solar photovoltaic panels in conjunction with the automaker's lithium ion batteries. Although few details are available, it appears that the companies will evaluate quick charging systems that use solar energy to charge a bank of automotive-grade batteries. The batteries would then be used to charge cars. If it is effective, the system would reduce the load required from the grid, eliminating one of the concerns of electric vehicles while also making the use of solar more practical.
Gallery: 2010 Nissan Leaf EV
[Source: Nissan]
press release
NISSAN AND SHOWA SHELL START STUDIES ON JOINT DEVELOPMENT OF A QUICK CHARGING SYSTEM USING SOLAR PANELS AND LITHIUM ION BATTERIES
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Showa Shell Sekiyu K. K. today announced they will start studies on joint development of a quick charging system for electric vehicles (EV) using Showa Shell's next-generation CIS solar panels and Nissan's advanced lithium ion batteries for automotive use.
This joint development will take place as part of a commissioned project for EV diffusion launched by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
A quick charging system of which both companies will consider joint development aims to have following characteristics.
* Maximizing the use of solar power which is renewable energy, the system will contribute to diffusion of EV as a ultimate zero emission vehicle which emits no exhaust gas like CO2 not only in driving but also in generating electricity.
* With lithium-ion batteries, power will be able to be supplied in case of power outage at the time of disaster.
* Reducing influence to grid power (load leveling), the system will enable to install quick charging facilities with lower electric power capacity.
In addition, a quick charging system using the next-generation CIS solar panels and lithium ion batteries is expected to be utilized in houses and large-scale solar power plants (mega solar plants).
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tim 8:35AM (8/21/2009)
Using banks of batteries or capacitors as storage "tanks" allow quick charging is an excellent idea. They will also help balance “The Grid” and serve as an local emergency power sources as well as a secondary use for “recycling” older automotive batteries. That’s efficiency!!!
PLUS there will be no need to waste energy by transporting expensive and dangerous liquid or gaseous fuels over the road. In fact, NO new “infrastructure” is needed other than individual quick-charge stations which can be palletized and installed almost anywhere.
Bottom line:
We ALREADY have an energy “pipeline” going to almost every home & business as well as locations that could be used for "Quick Charging" so we DON’T need to go in debt another TRILLION $DOLLARS for a brand new Hydrogen infrastructure*.
(*unless you’re a stupid, corrupt politician in the pocket of an oil industry which is trying to keep their “customers” addicted to H2 reformed from natural gas.)
By By Hydrogen morons! The “H2 Economy” balloon was sent up and promptly shot down by a BETTER idea… the “Electric Economy”.
(Tesla was right.)
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Matt 8:58AM (8/21/2009)
I've seen some companies designing solar carports/covered parking solutions aimed at EV charging. This is such an elegant combination of renewable energy, EV's, and usage of otherwise wasted space to produce a valuable resource. You're creating the energy right at the location needed (no transmission losses). You're using a larger surface area than you could get from vehicle-mounted solar panels. And in hot, sunny climates, you're providing a shaded place to park vehicles which reduces the amount of energy required to cool the vehicle (of course it removes the solar heating of the vehicles in the winter which then requires energy to heat the vehicle so that net gain/loss will be climate dependent). Plus as people leave work at 4-6pm, you've got an increasing excess amount of solar power generation that could be fed to the grid during peak demand time.
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johnmorgan 10:07AM (8/21/2009)
Plus, solar carports & covered parking lots will keep the bird poop off of my shiny new EV!
Tim 11:24AM (8/21/2009)
Matt,
Solar carports/covered parking solutions aimed at EV charging is a great idea as long as the companies pay for the instead of forcing the taxpayers (even those without EVs) to pay the bill.
Even carports without PV Solar are good ideas because they cool the cars which then require less energy to air condition. Placing PV on the carport roof is an excellent use of unused space.
Nixon 1:01PM (8/21/2009)
Tim, let me approach this from 2 different angles.
1) Sufficient number of electric cars and alternate fuel cars will reduce the demand for gasoline, which will lower it's price. Why should drivers of gas vehicles reap 100% of the benefit of lower gas prices due to lower demand, while paying 0% of the expense that it cost to cut that demand? Do you consider that equitable?
2) The US tax code is completely chock full of tax incentives and tax disincentives that are in place to influence behavior without banning it. For example, there are tax incentives for student loans for college education to encourage going to college. There are high taxes on cigarettes to discourage smoking. In both cases, the best interests of the United States is being promoted.
Now there are going to be tax incentives for people that choose to help break the US of our dependency on Oil as a transportation fuel. You have the same freedom of choice that you have for every tax incentive or disincentive. You can either choose to participate in helping the US break our dependency on oil (and reap the personal tax benefits), or you can go against the best interests of the United States and not participate, and suffer the personal economic consequences.
It is no different than the Fire Department. I personally have absolutely NO interest in paying to have the Fire Department put out a fire in YOUR home. I don't want to pay for it. You pay for it. But there is a compelling best interest of the State that putting out fires is a good thing, so we pay taxes and putting out fires is done at no charge to the homeowner. So while you might have no interest in your tax dollars going towards green projects such as this, there are a NUMBER of compelling best interests of the State that justify programs such as this.
3PeaceSweet 9:28AM (8/21/2009)
Industrial sized wind turbines are now rated at 2-3 MW which is more than enough power to fast charge many electric vehicles.
Wind turbines with flywheels at the base would seem to be a much cheaper way of doing the same thing, (flywheels cost about half as much as batteries, and wind electricity costs about 1/4 as much as solar) but solar would be much smaller and be more productive during the day when it was more likely to be used.
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Tim 9:54AM (8/21/2009)
Renewable energy facts:
1) Solar works only during the day.
2) Wind blows primarily at night.
3) Things that move (like flywheels), break due to friction.
4) It takes a LOT of energy to grow, harvest, process, deliver & combust biofuels which use only the daylight hours to photosynthesise solar energy.
5) When energy is changed from one state to another, some is that energy is lost in a 3rd state. (usually heat and/or light)
6) Electron storage is the key to a renewable electric infrastructure. Ultracapacitors and Chemical batteries offer the least losses and least maintenance at the greatest density.
7) We STILL have a LOT to learn!!!
Tim 9:36AM (8/21/2009)
Uses for used EV battery packs:
1) Quick-Charge stations.
2) Load Leveling at the point of generation.
3) Load & Rate Leveling at the point of consumption.
4) Generate PROFIT at home or business by charging it when rates are lowest and discharging it when rates are highest. You can use it yourself to save money or sell it back to the utility for a profit.
5) Ideas anyone?
Finding a secondary use is the MOST efficient form of recycling. These battery packs will have LOTS of life left even when they are no longer useful for automotive applications due to diminished storage capacity or newer technology!
Fool cells are designed for ONE fuel at a time. Any "fuel" can be used to generate electricity which can be stored in any battery pack.
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Matt 10:53AM (8/21/2009)
You hear about pumping water uphill with solar and/or wind as a storage solution (run the water back downhill through a turbine/generator to produce electricity during times when the renewable source isn't producing).
It doesn't have to be water but anything with weight (the more the better) raised in elevation creates energy storage by increasing the potential energy. One negative aspect of EV batteries is their weight. What about used battery packs housed in elevator-like shafts in multi-story buildings (maybe multiple packs on a single, heavy-duty platform). Charge and/or lift the packs using renewable energy or off-peak, cheap electricity. Discharge and/or lower the pack when demand or peak-pricing warrants. You could turn a battery disadvantage into an advantage while augmenting the storage capacity of the batteries themselves.
Tim 11:25AM (8/21/2009)
Matt;
"...pumping water uphill with solar and/or wind as a storage solution (run the water back downhill through a turbine/generator to produce electricity..."
Ever heard of "pumping losses", maintenance of moving parts or vast amounts of energy required to make metal parts and used make dams? What about all the habitat that is flooded to make holding basins? THAT'S NOT GREEN!
What about this:
Deadly Catastrophic Failure at Russian Hydroelectric Dam
21 August 2009
"..at least twelve have been confirmed and seventy two are missing and presumed dead."
http://depletedcranium.com/
"...I think I'd better thing it out again!" (Fagin)
why not the LS2LS7? 11:38AM (8/21/2009)
For an idea you seem to think is so dumb, it is rather widely adopted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Matt 11:59AM (8/21/2009)
I wasn't suggesting pumping water, just using that as an illustration and that there's nothing magic about water and any mass (ie batteries) can also be raised in elevation to store energy. Use an elevator-like configuration and you could store both chemical and gravitational potential energy in a large battery pack.
But to continue your argumentative tone, every energy generation and/or storage technology will have risks. How many people do you think have been disfigured or killed by lead acid battery accidents? And of course no one has ever been killed by a nuclear incident. Coal and its direct and indirect life/health risks are pretty obvious. Even solar panels have some nasty chemical compounds that hopefully won't ever be sent to some some third world country for "recycling" like many semiconductor products where they are smelted over open flames to recover metals, causing very high cancer death rates. I'm sure someone has fallen from a wind turbine tower to their death, and eventually one of those huge carbon fiber turbine blades will fracture and hurl a huge chunk of carbon fiber on some innocent person. Even the most benign of solar technology, plants, are risky if you eat the wrong one or have a big one fall on you in a severe storm.
Similarly, every process is lossy whether it's hydraulic, electrochemical, whatever. Something like a Lacrosse BC-900 charger will easily show that the amount of A-H you get from a battery on discharge is less than what you put into it during the charge cycle. The higher those charge/discharge rates are, the bigger that discrepancy. And even when one technology IS more efficient, other factors like price, scalability, environmental factors (both locational and toxicity inputs and outputs), etc may mean a more-lossy process is a better fit.
Mainly just being argumentative since you were, but just like we won't have one generation solution, we won't have one storage solution (batteries), either.
John Lee 9:51AM (8/21/2009)
I think it's a dumb idea. It perpetuates the notion that electric cars will require prohibitively expensive new infrastructure.
Cars are idle 95 % of the time. Quick Charge will be more expensive than a trickle charge. Cars will be trickle charged over 90% of the time, during nonpeak hours. I think that the concerns that ~3% of the nations cars will be quick charged ~10% of the time are a little overblown. By the time that there are a significant number of cars quickcharging off the grid, there will be sufficient numbers of V2G cars buffering he same grid. We are not going to somehow have many vehicles that need a quick charge without at the same time having many more vehicles available to buffer the grid.
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Tim 10:11AM (8/21/2009)
John Lee,
Nissan's idea is NOT about Quick Charge vs Home Trickle Charge. ALL EVs will be trickle charged at home each night.
Nissan’s idea is about Quick Charge vs Battery Swap during those occasional long trips as suggested by Project Better Place.
Nissan's idea will allow you to OWN your car and battery pack instead of just owning the car and paying a monthly fee for the battery also known as the "cell phone model".
Personally, since I take REALLY good care of my things and they last a LONG time therefore I prefer to pay things off instead of getting stuck in monthly payments... FOREVER.
I'd prefer Nissan's quick charge (at a per-use fee) for my occasional long trips over PBP's "cell phone model" any time! Plus, I want to choose the secondary use for my battery pack. It has value so do I keep & use it at home or do I sell it to a commercial user or sell it to a recycler? The CHOICE should be MINE.
Ernie 3:07PM (8/21/2009)
I was about to say. The fear that quick charging will put an enormous strain on the power grid is utterly unfounded. Your local 7-11 uses more power just for AC and refrigeration, and they probably use 240v mains to power them. *Many* other small businesses have even higher power demands.
Vancouver has an entire fleet (about 300+ I think) of electric trolley buses, all of which run at 600v and enough amps to push a fully-loaded bus. While our grid may have been designed for this task, it's hardly difficult to provide that kind of power, as all it takes is the right transformer to step down from the 7200 volts on the carrier grid.
John Lee 10:06AM (8/21/2009)
We need to put a stop to the intuitively wrong idea that electric cars need be a burden to the grid. There are business interests who could make a ton of money were the system constrained as such in order to make this so.
Eclectic cars will be far better at stabilizing the grid. But it's very important that we get the rules right for this to occur. Prices for charging need to vary with demand, and there needs to be incentive to have your car feed energy back into the grid when it has spare capacity. Corporate interest is always the enemy of the "invisible hand". Corporate interest will always seek monopoly power unless checked by us and the rules - or government - that we create.
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why not the LS2LS7? 11:47AM (8/21/2009)
A 2'x4' panel can produce about 330W peak. Assuming it produces peak power for 8 hours a day (since it doesn't do anything at night and it only actually produces peak power when the sun is right overhead), that's 2.64kWh per day. So, if we get 12 of them (covering a 8'x12' area) we'll have 30kWh per day, which is enough to charge a Leaf or a bit over half of a Tesla. So if you build them as covered parking spots, then each parking spot can dispense 120 miles of range total per day (1 car gets 120 miles, or 60 miles to 2, etc.), on a sunny day. On a cloudy day, it'll be about 24 miles of range. And in the winter, less in both cases.
I think actually a real parking spot is closer to 10'x16', which would give room for 20 panels, about 52kWh per day on a good day, closer to the full amount a Tesla Roadster uses, about 200 miles of range per day.
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Mark Kiernan 11:58AM (8/21/2009)
So it would be pretty feasible? Considering that most cars need only a partial charge.
Rif 1:21PM (8/22/2009)
@LS2LS7
"A 2'x4' panel can produce about 330W peak."
That is like 440Wpeak/m2. Where can you buy solar PV panel like that? Please provide a link.
Solar PV is great but it is sadly not very powerful. You are off by about a factor 3 on the optimistic side. In reality solar PV panels are just between 50 to 160Wpeak/m2, with mono-crystalline among the most powerful.
A standard parking space 5.5m*2.4m with 8h average daily sun = 13.2m2 * 150W/m2 * 8 = 15.8KWh/day.
An electrical car use ca. 150Wh/km so 15.8KWh / 150KWh/km = 105km daily driving. This could work for a private parking, if you park there during the day or has complete battery bank for temporary storage.
13m2 ~2KW of solar PV panel is rather expensive ca. 7000-9000 EUR. This does not include battery bank.
For a different method, here is a low scale solar powered car. It likely can drive up to 40km per day on sunshine.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/ucflorida-has-a-solar-powered-cars.php
kert 5:30PM (8/21/2009)
Just one thing: for stationary storage, modern flywheels beat batteries hands down. Better power density ( energy density not being a big issue ), no wear, no cycle life issues and no shelf life issues.
Flywheels are already being deployed at large scale for grid balancing.
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