How a giant battery is transforming a town centre in Cannington, Ontario | Hacker News Reader

How a giant battery is transforming a town centre in Cannington, Ontario

betakit.com

54 pointsbuiltbystef16 comments

> The courtyard’s 60 kWh energy system charges during the cheap, off-peak night hours, then powers the TNDF’s two buildings for six hours the following day.

> Already, multiple people are charging their phones in the courtyard in the morning, and it has helped an electric wheelchair user get moving when they ran out of juice.

The text is not really clear on that, but does this mean, there are also outlets (standard plugs, USB, etc) on the battery itself, where anyone who passes by can charge their devices for free - or does the battery only supply the buildings and the rest is just "oh we also put it in the middle of the sidewalk, slapped some LEDs on it and now call it a 'gathering place'"?

The first one would be useful and would people give an actual reason to gather there, the latter sounds like a marketing stunt.

It's a courtyard with lattice work back wall and bench seating against that.

It'd be a better assumption that the charge points are close to the seating.

See also:

   A 60 kWh energy system with seating and public charging, it also provides power to charitable foundations in the town and is capable of delivering power in the event of outages.

~ https://www.archdaily.com/1183143/prototype-architectural-ba...

and

~ https://tndf.ca/civic-grid/

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks!

I don't understand. What's special about being able to charge your phone? Can't you do that anywhere you have a power socket?

Ontario has a lot of nuclear power, thus a lot of underused power at night. One of the available rate plans provides power at 2.9 cents/kWh at night, making this sort of rate shifting feasible.

60kwh is just a small house battery, and is mid sized for a car,"giant" eh? which means somebody got a grant to put in a battery at 50~150 times it's wholsale cost, likely more

While I agree that that's a mid-sized EV battery, that would be a large battery for a house. E.g a Powerwall 3 is only 13.5 kWh.

I always thought the Powerwall was undersized, especially when you compare to the cost and capacity of a fixed-mount generator.

When I briefly looked at Powerwalls my installer said that for a 10kW system like mine they would generally install two because of inverter limitations and because it would be a better capacity match.

In the end we have a pretty generous NEM agreement so it wasn't necessary, but it is something we researched at the time.

why does the powerwall come with such a tiny battery for large cost where cars come with huge battery?

Most people are buying range in a car, so notice what it really means.

Batteries are easier to, ahem, ‘sell’ per dollar maybe?

What are you running at your home? 60kwh. I used to run 2x box AC(inefficient) for 24/7 in summer and was lucky to crack 20/25kwh.

I love it!

I can just see a whole lot of other town squares having a public battery (and corresponding public charging facilities) like this one, in the future!

It's sort of like "town-from-100-years-ago" meets "technology-from-100-years-from-now" at this center point...

(Also, it would be a great item (if you're a salesman or enjoy sales!) to sell to small towns and municipalities... how could they say no? Wouldn't every small town want a public charging facility that doubles as a piece of art?)

Anyway, super interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of these appear in public places in the future!

What microservices can be run, powered at a perpetual trickle from the battery?

All things up for grabs, electronic things that can bring people physically together. Internet-in-a-box, a Bitchat node, someone else continue, my imagination is sleeping since it's work hours...

I really like the approach and design, just a tad worried it also looks like a greenhouse that will then need cooling - will have to dig into the design, thanks for sharing.

For Halloween they should fill it with fake bodies and set the lights to green. Matrix battery!

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