[ausev] Meeting this Saturday

[Gary Ellis]

Sorry I was unable to attend the meeting this past weekend.  I would be
interested to hear what was discussed about charging infrastructure in
Austin.

Public charging:
I know that Austin Energy is not in favor of this, as they would rather see
EVs charge at night at off-peak hours.  But I do know that they have plans
(distant plans?) of putting in a few alternative fuel stations.  Any news on
this?  They are not opposed to (but also are not interested in supporting) a
grass-roots program of getting grocery stores, coffee shops, parking
garages, etc. to allow EVs to use their existing outdoor outlets.  I'm still
in favor of this and would be happy to discuss this further.

Service Upgrades:
30A 220V options for faster charging will serve well for quite sometime,
since it has the potential to charge relatively large capacities (50kWh) in
a reasonabe time.  But as battery technology improves and customer demands
push the range of EVs, Austin Energy will be faced with the issue of
increasing the current capacity to a large number of households.  Simply
upgrading the house service (as in Barry's case, for his 70A Tesla charger)
will work for a while, until too many people in the neighborhood have high
current services.  I don't know if this is a plan item for them yet.

Using EVs as Energy Storage:
>From what I've heard, it sounds like AE isn't considering this seriously
anymore.

Lead-Acid Graveyard:
As we cycle through our battery packs to the point that they no longer have
the capacity sufficient for an EV, the batteries still have a fair amount of
life in them for less demanding applications.  Since a home AC compressor is
typically about 40A or less, one interesting idea is to use a set of old
batteries as a dedicated power source just for your home AC.  Recharge these
batteries at night, so they will run your AC during the day, and they would
help level the grid loading.  Any AE customer could have such a system
installed, whether or not they own an EV, and would be a consumer of old EV
packs.  If AE ever gives off-peak power discounts, then this would be
economically advantageous to the customer.  Otherwise, it would just be in
the interest of AE to support these systems to help reduce the daytime grid
loading, as with the solar program.

Li-ion Breakeven Point:
As prices for Li-ion drops and their reliability increases, we're getting to
the point where the upfront cost of a Li-ion pack and long life is about the
same as replacing several sets of lead-acid batteries.  We probably have
enough collective experience in our group to do a good comparison on this.

Well those are off the top of my head.  I'd like to hear others thoughts and
discuss ideas further.
Thanks,

Gary
ReinCarNation
www.rcnmotors.com


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Chris Robison <chris at chrisrobison.org>wrote:

> Hey folks, about that time again...
>
>
> The June meeting for AustinEV is this Saturday:
>
> When: Saturday June 13, 2pm
> Where: Austin Public Library, Terrazas Branch
>       1105 E Cesar Chavez St
>       Austin, TX 78702
> Map:  http://is.gd/jdTP
>
> We'd like to have a discussion on charging infrastructure in Austin,
> what's currently being done and what we'd like to see happen. If you
> have any thoughts on the subject, please share your ideas and
> information with the group!
>
>
>
>  --chris
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusEV mailing list
> AusEV at austinev.org
> http://www.austinev.org/mailman/listinfo/ausev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.austinev.org/pipermail/ausev/attachments/20090615/5d662035/attachment.html