A question that is asked in the face of electrification: How will the network manage all this new load if we electrify everything?
With many of the major automakers recently announcing a lineup of electric vehicles, the concern now extends to transportation. Fortunately, we have a very recent example of how electrification can be made to bring benefits to all concerned. This is not an endorsement of a product or a company, but a strategy. Ford's F-150 Lightning and the company's approach break down barriers to EV ownership and signal that US automaker leaders are beginning to understand that EV technology can be a competitive advantage for them. The Ford team seems to have put together what is often a key ingredient in technological leaps; they rightly recognized home charging for what a huge challenge it is, and instead of simply providing a path to a solution, like finding a qualified local installer, they turned it into an almost unimaginable opportunity. With an extended-range battery, the company is including installing an 80-amp fast charger at your home. While that's great, it's not the fast charging that makes this a game changer. Their solution creates buyer value that will be hard for Ford's competition to beat for a long time to come.
The Ford team partnered with the leader in rooftop solar PV installation, SunRun, to install the bi-directional charger at our home. This unique charger, in conjunction with SunRun's nationwide network of solar installers, not only provides the charge times we want to get an electric vehicle working for us; simultaneously provides serious backup power for our homes. Combined with a $0 out-of-pocket solar PV installation, the average F-150 owner simply became carbon neutral and self-sufficient at the same time. Ford's electric vehicle development team deserves credit for understanding where the market is headed and being ahead of the development curve.
Heat pumps of all kinds have been in the news recently for their incredible efficiency, producing up to four times the usable output for a given amount of input power compared to a traditional heat source. The latest advances allow air source heat pumps to operate in extreme environments, creating a suitable replacement for gas-fired space heating equipment. Heat pump water heaters have been available for over forty years. Even so, they have only just begun to gain popularity in America, accounting for less than 2% of water heater sales nationwide last year. Despite representing up to 32% of the energy consumed in single-family and multi-family homes.
While, in Chile, renewable energy production has increased across the country towards a 100% renewable energy future, short-duration, grid-connected energy storage is a key technology to expand renewable penetration towards 100% . That is where the magic of thermal energy storage (Solar Thermal Plant Project in the north of the country) together with heat pumps can play an important role.
In the future in the world there will be thousands of connected large-capacity energy storage devices of many types in a few years, scattered in different utility areas. There will be the ability to disconnect loads from the grid or supplement grid power with stored power during peak demand periods, significantly reducing demand on the grid with minimal impact on the user experience. Charge times can be delayed to align with solar PV power output to absorb sunlight, allowing more renewable power generation to come online.
Going back to the Ford company example, charging a battery for the new F-150 pickup or running a TROCKNNER heat pump designed for 177 afternoon showers uses less energy.
For example:
The F-150 truck has an extended range of 155kWh of usable capacity and 155kWh is 528,860btu and 2800 liters of water heated to 70°C contains 528,000btu of usable energy (usable range 50°C to 70°C).
A multi-family building designed for 177 occupants uses a 125,000 btu/hr heat pump water heater (9 kW input power) connected to 2800 liters of hot water storage. In other words, the energy from the Ford truck alone can power a TROCKNNER heat pump and heat water for 177 people.
Welcome to the future.
