This is a very interesting story. There are three very interesting points made in this article.
First, Nissan realizes that recharging electric vehicles is going to disrupt the neighborhood grid. It's my understanding that the transformers you see hanging on the utility lines in your neighborhood are not rated to handle more than one or two rechargeable electrical vehicles in your neighborhood. Once electric vehicles catch on, General Electric will have to build enough transformers to replace all those we currently have.
Second, and I did not know this. A typical electric vehicle battery, when fully charged, has enough stored electricity to power the typical American home for about two days. This should be great for those who experience temporary outages due to storms, or brownouts due to maximum drain on the regional grid.
Third, the batteries have a much longer useful life than the automobile itself. I did not know that.
Nissan's Leaf went on sale late last year, but the automaker is looking ahead to about five years time when aging Leaf vehicles may offer alternative business opportunities in using their lithium-ion batteries as a storage place for electricity.
Nissan Motor Corp. acknowledges that, once the Leaf catches on, a flood of used batteries could result as the life span of a battery is longer than an electric vehicle's.
Even after a Leaf is ready to be scrapped, its battery is likely to have 80 percent of its capacity. On the plus side, the Leaf with its high-capacity battery can store the equivalent of two days of household electricity use, Nissan said.
It sounds like the article is suggesting that folks could put used Leaf batteries in their basements or garages, and put solar panels on their roofs to recharge these redundant batteries.
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