EVTV Friday Show - January 18, 2013

- Speedster Nippon: First drive and weigh-in : 2006 lbs in a 1957 Porsche Speedster Electric
- The invasion of the RechargeCar Guys: Autoblock AMP and the Macchina
- New CANbus controller for the TCCH/Elcon charger (with the RechargeCar Macchina Board)

First some news, as usual

Speedster Nippon first test drive: it is rolling fine !

The RechargeCar Team is here to talk about their prodcuts, including the 30 units of the Macchina Jack purchased from them to make it available on the EVTV online store

CAN controlled TCCH / Elcon / Chinnic Charger 

Design Objects : Wattson Silver, MacBook Pro and Saarinen Table & Chairs

Wattson Silver, MacBook Pro and Saarinen Table & Chairs : I think they are a good match

Wattson Energy Monitor is getting a lot better !

Wattson is already a great energy monitor because it shows real time power usage & generation, and this is what people need to see to understand what is going on in their home

Day or Night, you know your usage & generation

But if you wanted to see your energy history, then you had to plug Wattson into your computer, upload the data and launch the Holmes graph software to see your usage & generation figures over the last days, months or years ... Good but a bit tedious and time consuming



Energeno will probably launch soon Wattson Anywhere, a portal where you can see all this online; Their director Mark Elliott mentionned this in his last article and Energeno has a link to one of their team member's Wattson Anywhere Public graph on their Optimmersion product page; Check out the very interesting PDF documentation of this Wattson Family Product here: Optimmersion PDF Documentation


I think that now I can say that I have been beta testing this Wattson Wifi & Wattson Anywhere plateform for the last three months and I love it; You can find my home usage and - BESPSS - micro generation graphs on my public Wattson Anywhere page

This portal is great because it works on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC and more ... You do not need to install any app on your device, just a web browser is needed


iPad screenshot


iPhone screenshot



You can click to zoom in and see the details of the selected period




Via a user / password link I can access the History, Analysis on the Energy Generated, Account / Set up; Here are some more screenshots (Chrome on OS X) of the History tab:

History - Power


History - Energy

Carlos Ghosn at Detroit NAIAS about the LEAF

Nissan's CEO Carlos Ghosn talks about the LEAF price drop and the production facilities opening in the US and Europe along with customers expectations being taken into account - 2013 Detroit NAIAS

デトロイトで開催された2013年北米国際自動車ショーでゴーン社長はEV販売から経済状況まで、幅広く今年の展望について語りました。

The Price of Storing the Sun: Solar Incentives for Energy Storage

Energy storage is too expensive for use in grid-tied residential solar. At least, that’s the current thinking. Though installing distributed storage in each home would help mitigate solar’s intermittent power supply, preventing large local spikes and drops in power supplied to the grid, it’s a tough financial case to make with traditional energy storage. Unlike off-grid solar, where energy storage is necessary to guarantee constant power, grid-tied energy storage mitigates system level issues caused by high concentrations of distributed renewable generation. To incentivize consumers to adopt storage as a way to mitigate this issue, a mechanism must be put in place to pass some of the value created by distributed, grid-tied storage from the system operator to end users.

Greentech Media recently published an interesting article covering this topic. They broke down some of the avoided costs and subsidies associated with residential solar systems:
SGIP: California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). SGIP offers $2 per watt for energy storage systems, which at a four hour discharge rate is equivalent to $500 per kWh.
Federal Tax Credit: This 30% tax credit applies to solar systems, but the real question is whether this could include the battery system as well. This shaves off about a third of the system costs.
Time of use benefits: In California, PG&E offers optional rate plans where users pay less if they reduce consumption during peak hours. Batteries can be combined with this plan to offer consumers substantial savings over time. According to the Greentech Media article, the benefits from this add up to about $500 per kWh over the lifetime of the batteries.

Theoretically, this would mean that a system could cost over $1400 per kWh, or $7000 for a 5 kWh system, and still provide a breakeven value proposition for consumers under the time of use pricingoffered by the CA system. By installing the system, they would get the added benefit of having a backup power supply in the event of a blackout. It should be noted that these numbers assume the ITC benefits could apply to an energy storage system.

Residential energy storage has multiple value streams that benefit both the end users and the utilities. Incentives like SGIP are an attempt to capture these benefits, but storage must be cheap enough to stand on its own, or it must be supported by a system that charges those who receive the value. Energy storage must pay for itself or it will never be a long-lasting solution.



Source: Aquion Energy

Nissan LEAF price dropping to 26kEUR in France

Since january 21st, Nissan has dropped the price of the LEAF in France to 26 kEUR*, that is 3 kEUR less than few days ago. 

This has probably something to do with the UK, Sunderland, new plant which is getting ready to make European LEAFs, with reduced shipping cost and no need to convert Yen into Euros ...

Source: Nissan.fr

*: including government incentive of 7,000 EUR for Electric Vehicles

Today, I am working from home

See ? in Wattson Silver's reflection  

Also notice that the heat pump is on, it is still quite cold here, close to 0°C