Vehicle recharge of home energy storage

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11524601-B2
Application number	US-202017018213-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 11, 2020
Priority date	Sep 11, 2020
Publication date	Dec 13, 2022
Grant date	Dec 13, 2022

Abstract

A system for managing energy of a building includes a controller in communication with a charger and configured to responsive to predicting (i) a coming power outage of an expected duration and (ii) a total energy reserve of a battery of a vehicle and an electric energy storage being less than an anticipated amount of energy to be used by the building during the expected duration, instruct the vehicle to recharge the battery at a target charge station and return before stored energy of the energy storage falls below a predefined value, and responsive to encountering the power outage, command the charger to supply electric energy to the building from the battery and electric energy storage.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for managing energy of a building, comprising:
a controller in communication with a charger and configured to
responsive to predicting (i) a coming power outage of an expected duration and (ii) a total energy reserve of a battery of a vehicle and an electric energy storage being less than an anticipated amount of energy to be used by the building during the expected duration, instruct the vehicle to recharge the battery at a target charge station and return before stored energy of the energy storage falls below a predefined value, and
responsive to encountering the power outage, command the charger to supply electric energy to the building from the battery and electric energy storage.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to calculate the total energy reserve using an available amount of energy of each of the battery and electric energy storage.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the controller is further configured to provide instructions to the vehicle to permit the vehicle to autonomously drive to and from the target charging station.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the controller is further configured to identify the target charging station based on whether the target charging station is at a location subject to the coming power outage using data received from a cloud server.

5. The system of claim 3 , wherein the controller is further configured to place a reservation at the target charging station.

6. The system of claim 2 , wherein the controller is further configured to, responsive to detecting the vehicle is away from the building, calculate the available amount of energy of the battery based on a current amount of energy stored by the battery and a planned route for the vehicle to drive to the building.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to responsive to occurrence of the power outage, prohibit the charger from transferring electric energy from the electric energy storage to the vehicle.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to responsive to occurrence of the power outage, command the charger to suspend power supply to consumers classified as non-essential and continue to supply power to consumers classified as essential.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to perform the predicting based on data received from a cloud server.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the predicting includes analyzing data from a cloud server indicative of weather forecast and electrical loads on a power distribution system.

11. An energy management system for a building, comprising:
a controller in communication with one or more electric consuming devices, an electric energy storage, and a charger configured to connect to an electric vehicle having a battery, wherein the controller is configured to, responsive to detecting a power outage of an expected duration and an energy reserve of the battery and energy storage being less than a predefined threshold to be used by the building during the expected duration, suspend power supply to the electric consuming devices classified as non-essential and continue to supply power to the electric consuming devices classified as essential from the electric energy storage and the battery of the electric vehicle.

12. The energy management system of claim 11 , wherein the controller is further configured to increase a charging energy threshold of the electric energy storage in anticipation of the power outage.

13. The energy management system of claim 11 , wherein the controller is further configured to predict the power outage based on user input.

14. The energy management system of claim 11 , wherein the controller is further configured to instruct the electric vehicle to recharge the battery and return to the building at a predefined time before stored energy of the energy storage falls below a predefined value.

Assignees

• Ford Global Tech Llc

Inventors

• Yu Lan
• Degner Michael W

Classifications

• H02J2105/52

  for limitation of the power consumption in the networks or in one section of the networks, e.g. load shedding or peak shaving · CPC title

• H02J2105/12

  supplying households or buildings · CPC title

• H02J2105/37

  exchanging power with electric vehicles [EV] or with hybrid electric vehicles [HEV] · CPC title

• H02J7/82

  Control of state of charge [SOC] · CPC title

• H02J7/42

  with electronic devices having internal batteries, e.g. mobile phones · CPC title