The World of Smart Begins to Grow Up
In 2005, I was deep in the throes of my peak oil obsession. I went to a couple of conferences that fall and at the big one in Denver, I met a guy who gave me a little glimpse into the future. I can’t recall his name, but I think maybe he worked for the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). He told me something about hybrid automobiles that I’d never heard before.
In 2005, I was deep in the throes of my peak oil obsession. I went to a couple of conferences that fall and at the big one in Denver, I met a guy who gave me a little glimpse into the future. I can’t recall his name, but I think maybe he worked for the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). He told me something about hybrid automobiles that I’d never heard before.
Plug-in hybrids and electric utilities
What he said was that hybrids, which had been in commercial production for about six years at that time, would allow charging from the grid as well as from the gasoline engine. When the car is parked at home or work, you plug it in to charge the batteries.
But that wasn’t the amazing part. I may have already heard of plug-in hybrids by then, but the gentleman went on to explain how plugging in a car like that could potentially either charge or discharge the batteries.
And what good would discharging the batteries do, you wonder? Go back and read my article about electric utilities and the duck curve. A big problem utilities are facing is being able to ramp up the supply in the evening as the solar electricity supply wanes and demand spikes. One possible source of electricity during that time is the batteries in plug-in hybrids that spend the afternoon charging in workplace parking lots.
Wow!
Welcome to the Future
What’s happening with the electricity grid is huge, but the thing that really captured my attention this year was self-driving cars. It started when I listened to an episode of my favorite podcast, 99 Percent Invisible, called Johnnycab (Automation Paradox, pt. 2).
In that podcast, Roman Mars talked about cars that would do the driving for us, of course, but the bigger idea was getting to the point where we don’t need to own cars at all. We just call for a self-driving car when we need one. And when all the cars on the road are self-driving, we can reduce lane size because they’ll be programmed with great precision to avoid each other.
The name of that episode also hints to a darker side. Johnnycab was the name of the robot-driven taxis in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall, but hey, let’s focus on the positive here.
I heard of a similar idea on another podcast, The Unconventionals. There’s a company named Bridj in Boston, and they’re somewhere between a taxi and a bus, but optimized with big data on traffic patterns and the movement of people from one place to another. You should check it out. There’s some really cool stuff happening out there that’s changing the world.
A bigger view of smart
I’ve written disparagingly about some devices that are supposed to make your home smarter. So-called smart vents for your heating and air conditioning system and the Mistbox, which mists water near your air conditioner’s condensing coil to help it run more efficiently, are two such products that give smart a bad name. Lloyd Alter has gone further and written an article titled, In praise of the Dumb Home.
On the scale of a single home, a lot of the ideas for making the stuff around us smart doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sometimes it just doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to do. In many other cases it’s just too much for homeowners to keep up with. That’s not to say it can’t work on that scale. Smart lighting controls can be a winner.
On a larger scale, though, using big data to move electricity or people or whatever more efficiently will be a good thing. We’re now on the verge of some big changes as these things start to happen.
Welcome to the future! I think I can see the singularity from here.
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Image of 1950s self-driving car from Paleofuture.
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Allison wrote: “One
Allison wrote: “One possible source of electricity during that time is the batteries in plug-in hybrids that spend the afternoon charging in workplace parking lots.”
This raises questions in my mind. Do any hybrids even have external charging capability? I thought that was the point of a hybrid drive-train. (I drove less than 2,000 miles this year, so EV’s aren’t much on my radar). If so, I wonder what the trade-off is between the storage benefit vs. the additional gas consumed when battery is left in a discharged state when it’s time to drive home.
And finally, in the case of a full EV, presumably the discharge controller will be smart enough to leave enough juice in my battery to get me home. But what happens if I decide to run an errand after work that requires the car’s full range? Opps.
All good questions, David,
All good questions, David, and I don’t know the answers. I hadn’t thought of that conversation I had ten years ago until I started thinking about self-driving cars, the new Bridj service, and the duck curve. As far as I know, plug-in hybrids aren’t used this way…yet.
As far as discharging beyond the ability of the car to take its owner home, I’m sure there would be ways to know how long the typical evening drive is for a car and make sure to leave more than enough for that and some errand running. Even then, if it’s a hybrid, it’s always got the gasoline to rely on. If it’s full electric, then they’d have to leave more charge.
“Do any hybrids even
“Do any hybrids even have external charging capability?”
Look up “plug-in hybrid vehicles”. There is one Prius version and a couple others. Problem is that you typically need a 220V source similar to totally EV vehicles (or charge times are way long).
I’ll disagree on one part —
I’ll disagree on one part — namely plug-in hybrids/EVs will not be charging the grid in a coordinated way in our lifetime.
Way too many issues with such a complex solution to a theoretical problem that’s so easily solved in a number of other ways.
1. Steal battery power from folks charging their cars at work? What if I have a long ride home? What if I have a trip planned after work? What if I have an EV and not a hybrid?
2. Power companies are town specific (at least where I’m from). How am I going to give power to a company that I don’t do business with? They’re going to use my VIN to know who I am? Send me a check at the end of the month? What if I don’t want to participate? What if most people don’t want to participate?
Instead — power companies can just add another natural gas plant or add capacity to an existing one. Natural gas is clean enough to supplement clean energy sources and even-out the generation vagaries when the wind isn’t blowing or sun isn’t shining. 100% renewable is NEITHER cost effective nor cost efficient because it requires so much EXTRA capacity to account for (unpredictable) weather patterns.
Or, power companies will just buy Tesla PowerPacks or equivalent and store excess capacity themselves, for times of peak demand, without needing to create and account for a nation-wide volunteer battery charging infrastructure.
Or, the 30-years of fusion research that’s about to come to a head in the next few years will make this entire line of thinking obsolete.
What I most definitely agree with are that self-driving cars will change the world, and someday make owning a car far less important and perhaps, less common. I’ll also predict that by 2030, they’ll have been proven so much safer that they’ll be MANDATORY in some form or other.
I can imagine mandatory auto-pilot will start with highways, where speed and distracted drivers are the most dangerous and traffic is mostly accidents and human curiosity, and where auto-pilot is the easiest to get right (stay in your lane).
I agree 100% with Phineas.
I agree 100% with Phineas. Owning an electric vehicle already requires some planning and adjustment due to range limitations. The last thing you want is some grid management system learning your routine (think NEST) so it can anticipate how far it can drain your EV battery. Also keep in mind that storage is most likely needed during evening drive time.
Likewise with home batteries. Tesla is pursuing utility trials centered around Powerwall. Good luck with that.
Phineas wrote: “Or, power companies will just buy Tesla PowerPacks or equivalent and store excess capacity themselves”
Indeed, that’s where the action will be. In fact it’s already happening. Old news… http://cnet.co/1JRE2E5