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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the free-electric dept.

Owners of home photovoltaic systems will soon be able to make their households even more sustainable, because PV power is also suitable for charging personal electronic vehicles. A home energy management system created by Fraunhofer researchers incorporates electric vehicles into the household energy network and creates charging itineraries.

The house of the future is environmentally friendly, energy efficient and smart. Its inhabitants can utilize rooftop-generated PV energy not only for household consumption but also to charge their personal electric vehicle. This scenario has already become reality for a collection of row houses built according to the "Passive House" standard in the German city of Fellbach in Baden-Württemberg. The group of new homes was upgraded as part of the "Fellbach ZeroPlus" project to include electromobility enhancements as well as a comprehensive energy management system. The initiative is sponsored by the German Federal Government's "Electric Mobility Showcase" program.

A couple Soylentils have done something like this, so perhaps this would be of interest to others who are considering doing likewise.


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  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:40AM

    by ledow (5567) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:40AM (#257859) Homepage

    More importantly, how much does an electric car, all the PV and the necessary cabling and installation cost.

    Because, as far as I'm concerned, cost is linked directly to the rarity / difficulty of managing the substances involved, and the amount of processing required to be done to them, and therefore is linked to the amount of energy used to produce them in the first place.

    I'm pretty sure we're just building very expensive "batteries" already just by using PV and electric vehicles, putting energy and resources into their creation that we can't easily get back out of them.

    Can you recycle solar panels?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @10:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @10:20AM (#257871)

    Did the school you went to, if any, cover concepts like amortization, cost vs value, or basic, maturation of technologies, or diminished cost over time? Didn't think so.

    Yes, solar panels are recyclable. Unfortunately, so is stupidity.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday November 03 2015, @10:55AM

      by ledow (5567) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @10:55AM (#257874) Homepage

      Last time I priced up a PV installation capable of pushing 32A down a cable to an electric car (Two years ago? So not that far out), the sum total of components was more than I've ever paid for all the cars I've ever owned.

      Without even including running, maintenance, and ongoing costs - just purchase and installation - it would have paid for a 10 year old car and 7 years worth of petrol (at a full tank per week), however.

      I have a 32A connector on the outside of my house, deliberately installed with the idea that - one day - I'd have to have an electric powered car. Fortunately the installation cost was shared with other devices that I do already have, however, it's still not even close to practical and the nearest I could get would be an electric moped which - admittedly - would cost 2p to charge a full charge that would drive 100 miles. But the purchase price would run me for several years of fuel and I'd have to get a different licence. To run that from PV would be prohibitively expensive, however, and take almost the entire days charge to do so. To do it with a car at the moment would be unthinkable initial outlay.

      I also actually work IN A SCHOOL. We have PV on the roofs. Whenever I mention it, our bursar shades his eyes and sighs. Yes. A mass-scale, serious, all-roofs PV system won't pay for itself in its working lifetime. However, it "looks good to the parents". There's even a little display board that tells you what it's generating and how much CO2 it's saved, etc. Sit and do the maths on the numbers it gives and it's basically laughable. And that's a SERIOUS installation by professionals, not something cobbled together by a homeowner. Last time I looked, because I did look, the entire PV system didn't produce enough to keep a single server operational without battery backup. Because, actually, yes, we were looking at all kinds of things and have on-site power generation for backup for the servers for a small school - not something you generally see - and we were looking at whether the PV could take the strain in an emergency. It couldn't run a single hypervisor, and over 24 hours it would exhaust any battery pack that could be charged by it.

      Sorry, but I've actually sat and run numbers. Even taking over-exaggerated operational lifetimes and zero maintenance costs (unrealistic anyway), its seriously out of whack with reality.

      Please note, I've been waiting 15 years for systems like this to come to viability and still the best on offer at enormous expense to somewhere as big as a school with 30 acres of land to its name, it can't come close to being practical. Sure, the numbers look pretty. The power display looks quite flash. Everyone goes "ooh, you've got solar power". And that's where it ends.

      Are solar panels really recyclable? I've been looking at all the EU industry-wide initiatives for such and they are basically exempt from most recycling rules - precisely because, although in theory its possible, nobody has yet got a practical business plan doing so.

      I might look like an idiot to you, but rather than just believe the hype, I run the numbers and research what actually happens.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:39PM

        by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:39PM (#257937) Homepage

        Last time I looked, because I did look, the entire PV system didn't produce enough to keep a single server operational without battery backup.

        Either you're within shouting distance of the arctic circle, or the school is at the bottom of a canyon, or you're lying. Because that whopper you just let loose right there is as absurdly hyperbolic as something like, "Last time I looked, because I did look, the Lamborghini's entire engine didn't produce enough power to propel it to a walking pace without an horse to pull it."

        The fact of the matter is that there's far more than enough residential roof space in the States for the entire country's energy needs -- not just residential, not just electricity, but all energy in all forms in all sectors -- with today's off-the-shelf kit.

        My own home is a perfect example. A bit more than a third of the roof is covered in solar panels, and I generate about half again as much electricity as I use. Yes, I'm in Arizona -- but even Seattle, where it's as bad as it gets for solar in the States, gets no less than half the sunshine than I do. Plus, I have an insane cooling load for months at a time when the overnight low temperature never dips below 90°F and the daytime high can top 120°F. Where I only had to cover a minority of my roof, in Seattle you'd need to cover most of the roof. And the median is closer to Arizona than to Seattle.

        I really don't get it. Why on Earth are so many geeks, presumably Libre Software fans, so down on solar and so up with nuclear? Solar is the Linux / BSD of energy: scales from tiny to monstrous, available to everybody, not encumbered by anything, and hugely profitable for the end user. Nuclear is the Windows of energy: grossly bloated, full of legal and technical traps, very opaque to the general public, purportedly friendly but always biting everybody in the ass, profitable only for Microsoft shareholders.

        You want free energy? Go solar. You want to pay for energy through the ring in your nose? Go nuclear.

        Cheers,

        b&

        --
        All but God can prove this sentence true.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:02PM

          by ledow (5567) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:02PM (#257986) Homepage

          UK. Several hundred metres of roofing (don't know exact area but it's a LARGE base of mostly single-storey buildings). Currently at 0.8KW. Most I've seen it is a handful of KW. Would like to see anyone run a server of any import on 800W of upy-downy-flaky solar.

          Welcome to real life, where if you're not on the equator or in Arizona you get almost nothing. Your solar output dropping going from Arizona (34 degrees) to Seattle (47 degrees) halves your output. Almost all the EU is at higher latitudes, most of Asia, the northern states, Canada, etc. Agreed that the Southern hemisphere isn't quite so bad for such things, but there's more to the planet than the US - and you can't just fling a cable down and transport it without massive losses either.

          This is very much a case of "it works here, it should work everywhere", plus that you have to have "the latest system" (or else you're considered "inefficient" - but you'll be "inefficient" next week too when your stuff is junk and unsaleable and you're told to just buy a new system again - hence my recycling concerns).

          I honestly couldn't run a washing machine from anything I've been quoted for for my own house, without battery storage and being ultra-careful about usage.

          School bursars, by the way, know this. It's a point of contention with them. They run the numbers and they just DO NOT add up for them. They may get forced to do so "for image" but in general they know exactly what's happening. I've watched any number of solar salesman fail miserably in front of a bursar with even a modicum of electrical knowledge. Schools are particularly easy targets especially when other solar is fairly useless (there are no domestic solar installations near me, but a few towns I drive through have a handful of "hot-water" solar systems only - I laugh because I've seen the prices on those exact models too).

      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:01PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:01PM (#257954)

        People don't recycle solar because they're still using it. Old cells basically have their output halved. Even shattered cells can be regrouped into a panel. I also find it hard to believe that your solar install can't keep a single server online. How many KW are you using and how much is installed on the roof? If you ran the numbers then wouldn't you at least install more supply than you are using?

        My guess is the school uses a lot of power just doing nothing. Active fire detection system, intrusion system, lights on all night, ac/heater always running, a dozen fridges/freezers in the cafeteria and breakroom, and so on. It would take a massive solar install to cover all of that. Even ignoring that, the solar install should pay for itself in ten years or so (depending on how much local power costs). Even if it only breaks even and the panel output blows. Sell the panels and have new ones put in. You'd keep the existing infrastructure.

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