Understanding and Connecting Smart Meters, Smart Grids, and Smart Markets.
- Lynne Kiesling
June 15th, 2022
Via Ars Technica, an article on Toyota’s plans to offer a lithium-ion home battery system your car can charge:
Toyota’s new home storage system will let an EV power a house.
The Toyota Motor Corporation has decided to get into the home battery sector. Earlier this month, the automaker announced its O-Uchi Kyuden System, a home energy store that provides “long service life, high quality, good value for price, and high performance,” according to the company.
It’s a surprising move from the world’s largest OEM, given that its supply of lithium-ion batteries is so constrained that it has to use battery packs from different suppliers for its new bZ4x electric crossover, depending on whether the EV is configured as a single or twin-motor variant.
The O-Uchi Kyuden system is more than just a battery pack for your house; there is also a DC-DC converter, which feeds into a power conditioner that can use energy from the battery pack or the house’s photovoltaic cells, it if has them. The pack has a capacity of 8.7 kWh and a maximum rated output of 5.5 kW.However, there’s also a vehicle power supply adapter, which allows you to plug an electric vehicle into the system and use it to power the house, similar to (but less powerful than) Ford’s Charge Station Pro, which lets you use an F-150 Lighting electric truck to power a home. Toyota says the maximum output from a supported EV to the home energy system is 1.1 kWh at 100 V AC.
Toyota’s system is also less powerful and stores less energy than Tesla’s Powerwall, which is currently rated at 13.5 kWh of useable energy. Then again, Tesla is unlikely to lose much sleep over O-Uchi Kyuden, which is only available in Japan.
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Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”
In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.