Battery powered cars and houses

[Bonescreek]

For some reason I just can't wrap my head around the idea of using batteries
to store power for cars and houses (solar).

If you replace all of the cars in use today with electric and all of houses today
with solar and batteries, how can that be better long term when we all know
batteries need to replaced at best in 3 to 8 years. End of life cycle for batteries.

Any battery made today will have a life cycle of only X amount of recharges.
X seems to be at best like 2500 and that sounds like a lot. But not when your
talking about 24/7 year in and year out.

So where do all the batteries go when the life cycle is done ? (landfill ?)

Needs to be a better way.

On the other hand if you could run Vehicles and Houses off of solar panels
only with no need for batteries that might be an answer or at least a better
way.

If you were to add up ALL the batteries needed to supply ALL the vehicles
and ALL the solar powered houses .. just how many batteries is that ?

Just a thought.

P.S. My numbers on battery life and recharge counts is only a reference and
not meant to actual. Just wanted to get the idea across.

[Digger1]

You kinda need a battery when the sun goes down. Or behind a cloud. Google up reliableAB for hour by hour power info for Alberta. Very interesting.

[stubblejumper01]

Regular automotive batteries and regular deep cycle batteries are recycled to recover the lead.
I'm not sure about the recycling process for the higher quality lithium type batteries but I have heard that the majority of the raw materials for these batteries come from China. The devastation their mining practices leave behind is brutal as they have poor environmental standards. The carbon footprint of mining the materials and then manufacturing and shipping them around the world is usually not offset by the green energy they produce and store over their expected lifetime

[bessiedog]

There are now many batteries that have been created that charge crazy fast and are made from pretty non toxic, benign materials. They’ll eventually be brought to market.

Simple google search

[Kim473]

Just wait till 30% of vehicles are electric, your house power bill will sky rocket, and pollution will start to double again with more power plants. I like the idea of a small gas engine powering a generator to recharge the electric part. Never get stranded unless you run out of both.

Nuclear powered vehicles ??? Maybe, some day ?

[CaberTosser]

The thought has crossed my mind about repurposing the battery packs from Tesla's as storage for a solar installation (or wind, hydro, etc). One article I read was specifically about the life cycles of such battery packs and how they would still have usefulness after they've been replaced on a car. On a car weight and range are paramount, but in a stationary installation one can always simply add a few additional battery packs. The article noted these battery packs would have some number of years of utility left when in household use.

It brought to mind the thought of how people would be scavenging Tesla's and Priuses for their batteries in a post-apocalyptic movie scenario. Just now I thought of a home with a bank of such batteries (say 5 to 8) and an electric vehicle (assume the proposed electric pickup truck). You could be collecting power with the homes solar array/ windmill/ biomass fuelled steam turbine and charging the vehicle from the homes battery bank.

[calgarychef]

If every house in any neighbourhood had an 2 electric electric cars we’d have to totally perlace the infrastructure to carry that much electricity.

[260 Rem]

Research & Development does not stand still but it appears that it has slowed significantly in the “engine power” sector ... where the big money has recognized that batteries are the future.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by calgarychef

If every house in any neighbourhood had an 2 electric electric cars we’d have to totally perlace the infrastructure to carry that much electricity.

Or at least have some kind of system in place that would sequence which cars were charging at what time during the night (or day). They would all get charged overnight, just not simultaneously.

[thirty-30]

Tesla cells are literally banks of these (Now sold and mass produced by Samsung)

https://www.imrbatteries.com/samsung...t-top-battery/

I've been looking into this very heavily for a school bus conversion I am thinking about.


I'm super tired and at work, but..

1 of these at 4.8 V / 4800 MAH is 4.8 watt hours.

10 is 230.4 (I know, it doesn't scale like you think it does, see https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/ele...alculator.html)

100 is 2304 Watt Hours.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. Average energy use in Canada is around 12,000 watt hours a day.

I'd want to be well ahead of that..

960,000 MAH of these batteries (200 of them) gives us 4608 Watt Hours...

800 of them gives 3,840,000 MAH which turns into 18,432 Watt Hours.

This begins to be manageable.

However, 800 of these is also 5,400 dollars which honestly isn't that bad.

There's some actual realistic numbers.

The Tesla cell contains 7,104 of these.

Enjoy. Back to work for me.

[fishtank]

its not a first world problem as long as we can get third world workers and dumping grounds .... look up pcb and solar cell panel production plants and recycles in other parts of the world

cold and battery dont work too well .

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by bessiedog

There are now many batteries that have been created that charge crazy fast and are made from pretty non toxic, benign materials. They’ll eventually be brought to market.

Simple google search

And Jesus is coming imminently.


Grizz

[Scott h]

Originally Posted by bessiedog

There are now many batteries that have been created that charge crazy fast and are made from pretty non toxic, benign materials. They’ll eventually be brought to market.

Simple google search

Kinda sounds like the capacitor company the Elon Musk just bought.

[bessiedog]

Originally Posted by Grizzly Adams

And Jesus is coming imminently.


Grizz

This one is close to entering the market
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/oilprice...Tesla.amp.html


I hope you don’t consider MIT to be fake news

http://news.mit.edu/topic/batteries


I’m not even digging here. You guys need to be open to the fact that it won’t be hard to overcome a lot of the barriers that today’s batteries have.

Energy independence would sure be a great thing for all of us. I don’t come at this topic from a ‘save the planet’ perspective. I simply hate being real dependent on oil companies and their oiligolpoly.

[Bonescreek]

Would be interesting to know if someone did an estimate of the
count of all batteries in use today, including current batteries sold.

Maybe "current" is not the word, perhaps last years sales would be
better. :-)

[gunluvr]

Global oil and gas reserves are more or less well known and most use less energy to extract than the mining of minerals to produce both solar panels and storage batteries. Reserves of these minerals are largely unknown. Most are in developing countries that exploit human rights and have poor environmental practices. As usual, there are also indigenous land rights to consider.
Solar panels and batteries of all kinds have a limited life span.
We all know fossil fuels will run out some day and we need to develop new energy sources, but that won't happen overnight, and for now, fossil fuels are our most needed and most reliable energy source. Don't forget plastics all come from O&G, and just how much we rely on plastics in nearly everything we use.
Those who choose to demonize the oil and gas industry for whatever reason will eventually have other energy monopolies to protest against and blame for all the woes they can dream up.

[6.5swedeforelk]

Originally Posted by thirty-30

Tesla cells are literally banks of these (Now sold and mass produced by Samsung)

https://www.imrbatteries.com/samsung...t-top-battery/

I've been looking into this very heavily for a school bus conversion I am thinking about.


I'm super tired and at work, but..

1 of these at 4.8 V / 4800 MAH is 4.8 watt hours.

10 is 230.4 (I know, it doesn't scale like you think it does, see https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/ele...alculator.html)

100 is 2304 Watt Hours.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. Average energy use in Canada is around 12,000 watt hours a day.

I'd want to be well ahead of that..

960,000 MAH of these batteries (200 of them) gives us 4608 Watt Hours...

800 of them gives 3,840,000 MAH which turns into 18,432 Watt Hours.

This begins to be manageable.

However, 800 of these is also 5,400 dollars which honestly isn't that bad.

There's some actual realistic numbers.

The Tesla cell contains 7,104 of these.

Enjoy. Back to work for me.

Thirty-30, put your feet up on the desk
and have a nap.

Then re-do your math (or rather, your process).

Ohms law > Always follows the rules.

[Scott h]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Or at least have some kind of system in place that would sequence which cars were charging at what time during the night (or day). They would all get charged overnight, just not simultaneously.

I guess that's where smart meters and time of day pricing comes into effect. If electricity price was 50% after 10pm and before 5am nobody would have a problem setting a timing program.

[bat119]

A new business idea would be cleaning off solar panels after each snowfall. A friend spent $30K installing the panels on the roof of his two story house the snow drastically reduced efficiency he hasn't been able to convince his kids or wife to clean them off every morning.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by Scott h

I guess that's where smart meters and time of day pricing comes into effect. If electricity price was 50% after 10pm and before 5am nobody would have a problem setting a timing program.

My concept would be based on the homes served by each transformer to keep those operating within their design limits and it would have to be switched wirelessly by a sequencing control at the utility companies transformer. It would have to work by switching just the car chargers because switching the entire home off would certainly not be acceptable.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by bat119

A new business idea would be cleaning off solar panels after each snowfall. A friend spent $30K installing the panels on the roof of his two story house the snow drastically reduced efficiency he hasn't been able to convince his kids or wife to clean them off every morning.

Compressed air duster jets installed to blast the panels clean. Achieved with a central air compressor installed in the home. More work for plumbers

[Redhorse Ranch]

Storage is certainly the elephant in the room when it comes to home-brewed power. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/n...sized-battery/ Not to say that technology won't change things, but this is where we are now.

[Bonescreek]

Wow that's quite an interesting read in your link to dothemath Redhorse,
but somewhere around reading about "moles" and "jewels" in the same
sentence got me lost. :-)

Kind of like "gophers and gems" in the same sentence.