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EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

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Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your numbers: 300000 miles / 320 miles/cycle = 938 cycles. 938 cycles * 72kWh = 67500 kWh. $12000 / 67500 = 18 cents. Dunno where I got my 2 cents from, that calculation was done 2 months ago.

I agree with your 18 cents/kWh. That's slightly more than the average cost of electricity in the US?.. That is interesting, that means for home-charging your electric cost (per mile) is about equal to the battery degradation cost. Thats 2x cost than most think.

Petrol engines get worn too.

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#82
post #54

I would not sell cycles from my EVs NMC battery.

Hmm, but how often and for how much? If you could get $500 to discharge 50% would that make it worth your while? If you only did it once a month? There are price situations like that on the grid already.

As others have mentioned power companies in California pay a lot for virtual power plants when the demand is high. If power companies can avoid running an expensive peaker plant once a month, everybody wins.

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#83
post #54

I would not sell cycles from my EVs NMC battery.

Hmm, but how often and for how much? If you could get $500 to discharge 50% would that make it worth your while? If you only did it once a month? There are price situations like that on the grid already.

Texas was paying $9/kWh for electricity during their blackouts. If you had 72kWh of electricity in your Tesla that'd be a nice payout...

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#84
post #2

I think EV owners would need to find some level of compensation for the additional cycles they would incur. Electric vehicles are expensive because of the battery so deteriorating the life of one of the most costly parts of the car doesn't feel like a great solution.

cycles hurt a lot less than just time does, but of course there would need to be some incentive!

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#85
It feels like an iceberg has been slowly turning over for the past 10 years, and is now flipping quickly.

Economic growth is now more correlated with carbon reduction than increase.

The useful work of preventing coal plants is over and we need to switch gears to get home appliances, ev cars, solar, wind and transmission out as quickly as possible. Environmental groups and common knowledge haven't caught up yet, but the fastest route to a low carbon future is a lot of factories producing ev cars, appliances, and batteries.

There are many zombie environmental groups that will continue to fight against anything humans try to change about the built environment, but over time the astonishingly good economics will move them to the side.

One of the nice thing is they don't really have much power other than stopping solar farms and stopping clean energy transmission. For 80% of the things we need to do, it's just people going to home depot.

And in many ways old school environmentalists are already losing the policy wars, the inflation reduction act is chock full of pro growth, pro abundance carbon reduction.

If you are looking for startup inspiration...

Super powerful battery augmented induction stove, hotter than gas: https://www.treehugger.com/impulse-electric-cooktop-gets-a-b...

In window heat pump 80% more efficient at heating and cooling. Helps with the big ticket/renter problem for heat pumps. https://www.gradientcomfort.com/

The coming abundance of energy...

Economic growth and solar: https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/157068814444987...

Solar economics: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-im-so-excited-about-so...

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not true, but they do make it very hard in some places and as a group utilities do kind of hate the idea. Almost all states require net metering, which what allows people to sell their solar to the grid, and there is some federal regulation too ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005 ). Despite these requirements most utilities make it pretty hard to set up.

I opted NOT to sell my excess to PNM (New Mexico), because the agreement allowed them to claim my 6.7kW array as part of their own progress towards renewable conversion. What I didn't understand was that I ended up with an even better deal! I get back the excess kW/h on a 1:1 basis. This is much better "pricing" than I would have received if I had sold it for cash. Granted this model only works if there's a part of t…

What's wrong with them counting your solar as part of their conversion? Nothing wrong with you declining if the price isn't high enough, but if they're paying someone for solar power, whether it's an individual or a company, I think they should count that as part of their renewable portfolio.

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#87

This is already happening today in California, a couple gigawatts of batteries are charged during the day and released in the evening to offset peak demand. https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

This seems high(?): for comparison, average power of French solar panels is 1.6GW (and a bit more for wind power).

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming Tesla prices and full cycling of battery (aka from 100->0), draining a kWh puts about 2cents wear on your battery, so compensation would need to be above that price. In practice you'd never allow your operator to drain you to 0, so 2 cents is very much on the high side. In the California Tesla VPP trial, they pay 50 cents per kWh. (correction: 20cents wear, not 2cents)

I calculate about $12 per Model Y full battery cycle, how did you get 2 cents? $12,000 (Model Y bat replace cost) * 300(miles for full drain)/300,000(total miles per pack) = $12 per cycle Edit: or 18 cents per kWh

18 cents per kWh is something like 5-6 times the wholesale price of kWh. This means that using EV for large scale storage is highly uneconomical.

Re: EV batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030

#90
Considering that most "EV batteries" are actually just smaller batteries glued together to bigger cells, modules and packs, I don't think this is as much of a win as people think it is.

It's like saying "We can green the planet with Duracells." Ignoring what's in the batteries or what it takes to manufacture them. Or how they degrade over time.

We may need to look at hybrid battery solutions with alternative energy storage systems, like graphene supercapacitors.

https://www.laserax.com/blog/ev-battery-cell-types

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