EVTV Friday Show - January 25, 2013 ** Jack Rickard chooses CHAdeMO **

Jack Rickard chooses CHAdeMO for Fast Charging

 because it uses the CAN Communication Protocol

This week:
- Test bench battery box construction
- CHAdeMO / SAE standards war
- Electric Ford Edge upgrade



News

Boing 787 Battery Fire; As usual for Jack, "It's the - over engineered - BMS ..."

Mitsubishi i-MiEV recall on breaks vaccum pump problem

Richard tested a small EV, and he liked it :-)

CHAdeMO talking

The Institute of Technology... Test Bench Battery Box Construction

I like that ...

Macchina from RechargeCar plugged in Jack's MacBook Pro

JLD404 - super - meter on top of the battery box

The soon to come Pulsar - super - charger

Jack's wife Ford Edge EV is being revisited and improved

CHAdeMO : The Number of DC Fast Chargers has Doubled in One Year

TOKYO, Japan (January 22, 2013) – In just 12 months, the number of globally installed Electric Vehicle (EV) quick-chargers has doubled

As the name implies, quick-chargers recharge batteries in minutes rather than hours, to build range confidence of an EV and greatly enhance the practicality of zero-emission transport

Commenting on reaching the milestone of more than 2,000 CHAdeMO quick-chargers, Toshiyuki Shiga, President of the CHAdeMO Association – the driving force behind the global spread of quick-charging infrastructure ¬– said: “One year ago there were around 1,000 quick-chargers in the world, but most of those were in Japan

Today, we have more than 2,000 CHAdeMO quick-chargers in place in Europe and the US as well as Japan. There’ s even a” CHAdeMO quick-charger in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. And plans are in place to more than double this figure again, above 4,000, by the end of 2013"

The number of CHAdeMO DC Quick charger installed up to today is 2364.

-- (Japan 1605 Europe 601 USA 154 Others 4) last update 2013.01.31

Evolution of the number of CHAdeMO fast charging station

Locations of DC Fast Chargers Worldwide (click for Google Maps detailed locations)

Links:
Locations of all CHAdeMO Charging Stations
CHAdeMO Press Release


Source : CHAdeMO Association

5,000 EUR + 169 EUR / month = Nissan LEAF in France

Yes, your eyes are reading this correctly, Nissan is now leasing the LEAF for 169 EUR per month, plus a 5,000 EUR first payment ! Now, this is a great offer consecutive to the newly announced price drop last week to 26 kEUR !




Source: Nissan France

How to Solar Power Your Home / House #2 - How to save energy / electricity for solar power

Martin Lorton just released the second part of his video series called "How to Solar Power your Home" and it is, like the first episode, very instructive; He goes into details on home electrical appliances energy consumption and tell us how to reduce them before looking into the sizing of your future solar system ...

How to make your home more energy efficient ready for solar power. Solar geysers, heat pumps, efficient pool pumps, LED lighting...and more...

Martin starts by writing down the Power used by each appliance in his home and multiplies it by the duration it operates => that gives the Energy used; Adding all the appliances energy consumptions, he gets the overall energy usage

Then he goes around the house to show us what he did to save energy, and here in the kitchen shows LED lighting that has replaces the regular fluorescent lights that were  used before => 3 times more efficient

Then, outisde, his pool pump has been replaced by a more efficient and programmable one, running most of the time in economy mode, saving energy, and sometimes turning faster

Then onto the roof, he add installed a solar geyser - solar water heater - that is gving hot water for free in summer for 5 months, and that needs supplement of heat brought by the heating element in other seasons, especially winter

This solar geyser has also a programmable control unit / display panel

After all this, he returns to his office, and shows us, on the paper agin, the energy savings applied to each appliance, and the overall energy use reduced by more than half ! This is for sure where everybody has to start before considering a solar system

To measure instant power, current, and energy on an appliance, it is good to use this cheap Kill A Watt meter that will show you all these figures and help you see what is going on in your house

A day with the ESS & Wattson Anywhere

This morning I decided to show a typical day using my Energy Storage System, ESS, along with the - beta version - of Wattson Anywhere

So it starts just after I get up and start my BESPSS by switching it to Inverter Mode; The batteries have been charging all night long, during off peak hours, they are now fully charged.

After this, shower, breakfast, and during these I can see Wattson (I have one downstairs in my bedroom and another one upstairs in the dining room) and also see the usage & generation graph on my iPad using the Wattson Anywhere portal - still in beta version -

Wait until the end of the video to see me refresh the Power graph on the iPad and zoom in during the generation period




These temporary used Lead AGM Batteries do not hold much energy, but they are still usefull to continue testing my BESPSS while waiting to get some CALB CA180FI ...

After brushing my teeth, I switch the ESS back into Charge Mode for the day

After my Vectrix ride to work, I light up a cirgarette and take my iPhone out of my pocket to check mails; This is what the Wattson Anywhere portal shows
In case you are wondering, the big 2kW+ usage at night until a bit more than 2AM is the water heater, starting automatically at 10:30PM when the rate is lower - night rate is half the price of day rate here -


After a coffee and saying hi to my colleagues, I start working, and soon I check the graph again, on my office Vista plastic HP PC - :-( - with a Chrome browser

After an hour or so

Let's zoom in a little bit on the last two hours

Karotz, facing Wattson, sends me an email with a picture taken few seconds before; I can then see instant Power Usage - before Wattson Profesional and now Wattson Anywhere, this was the only way I could see my home usage -

Let's refresh my PC Wattson Anywhere graph

Now, I am soon taking a lunch break, I check the portal again and zoom in again to see the overall morning graph

After our lunch and a little coffe, here is the situation


Let's see the Energy used & generated so far: Note the Green Generated Energy this morning, which brought down almost by half the Energy Purchased from EDF, my utility company


Karotz just sent me another photo: I see some light at home ...


and the power usage has gone up, which means the heat pump is working harder to get to the desired temperature (we always lower to 16°C when out and put it back to 19°C when at home)


Back home, I switch the LiFePO4 ESS to Inverter Mode


The effect on Wattson Anywhere graph

10 minutes later

Zooming in the 2nd generation period of the day

At the end of the day, this is what it looks like on the online portal


and this is the Energy grpah for the whole day


That's it for today !

ESS + Wattson Anywhere = Real Time Follow up of Generated Power at Home

Now with Wattson Anywhere I can keep track of my ESS Generation Anytime & Anywhere on Any device ! For me, this is really cool ...

My LiFePO4 BESPSS = Battery Energy Storage & Power Supply System stores 4kWh of energy and pushes it back into my home grid adjusting its output automatically, thanks to Wattson color codes, to keep the usage (purchased from my utility company EDF) as low as possible

Later on, this will be much improved when my solar panels are connected to my home grid: I will then store free solar energy during the day, and feed it back to my home appliances as soon as the sun is down or when the overall home power usage is high

To seethis Real Time Graph, go to my Public Wattson Anywhere Page



Back in october, when I still had these Mottcells cells (see picture above) on my BESPSS, the generation was pretty close to the usage (see graph below)

Zoom on the two generation periods of this day: Notice how the generation follows closely the usage

The same day, but the Energy graph, showing the amount of "green" energy generated

These are two iPad screenshots taken yesterday, while having breakfast, with my (Lead AGM) BESPSS switched ON

Every 5 minutes, I get an updated graph

The following screenshots show two full days with 2 BESPSS production periods in december and in january; Note that the Wattson Anywhere portal beta release has changed in between