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

nature.com

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

#91

Post by bryanlarsen »

xyzzyz wrote: post #88
georgeg23 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's only used for those periods when demand exceeds supply. In Texas, the wholesale price of electricity is $9/kWh during those periods.

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

#92

Post by _Algernon_ »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #40
iso1631 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the gas station selling you a tank of gas for $10 and buying it back for $15 later in the day, all while your car sits on your driveway

It will never work that way, except for the lucky few. Have you ever tried selling books back to the school store? They'll buy it from you for $10 when you paid $100 for it. Same thing will happen for this.

The difference is with the book your alternative is to not sell it back and getting 0$, assuming you've extracted all value.

In the case of the car, you can choose to not sell it, and use it for driving instead.

The incentives are completely different. You're comparing a scenario where they have you by the balls with a case where both parties are more or less equally powerful market participants.

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

#93

Post by ralph84 »

dublinben wrote: post #65
phkahler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that the standard DC chargers communicate with the vehicle using PLC (Powerline communication) chips even though that communication is not over the high power conductors? I've always had the feeling the grid operators got that included because they thought they were going to communicate directly with the battery management system to control it as they wish. It never happened and now the standard is stupi…

>stop wanting V2G, nobody actually wants it. Utilities really want V2G, so it's probably going to happen one way or another. It's probably less applicable to an individual homeowner, but commercial and other fleet operators are going to find this appealing at the right price. For example: https://www.proterra.com/press-release/massachusetts-electri...

School buses seem like possibly the only real use case here, since they have a very seasonal usage pattern. For other commercial vehicles, the operators buy them to operate, not sit around and power the grid. When are they envisioned to be powering the grid?

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

#95

Post by Dylan16807 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #58
nkingsy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes much more sense with large lifepo4 chemistry batteries that are expected to outlive the car by a wide margin. Lifepo4 batteries > 50kwh should easily handle 500,000 miles. Higher performance lithium ion will degrade at a rate faster than any expected return from a scheme like this. At least in Northern California it’s now cheaper for me to run solar+battery off grid than to pay pge. Lifepo4 pushes it over…

> If off-grid is competitive, selling at peak prices is a no brainer. So why isn't the utility managing the storage directly then? Aren't they best suited to do this??? Or is this article just saying that EV car batteries could ?

> Aren't they best suited to do this???

They don't have a million EV batteries, purchased outside the scope of this program, sitting around idle and connected to the grid.

Their customers do.

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

#97

Post by cwkoss »

mhb wrote: post #66
rtkwe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue isn't the controls to do that it's that the prices to compensate wear on a battery are a) likely significantly higher than the base price and b) pretty hard to calculate.

That's what a market is for.

Yeah, I'd try to model the deprecation cost of the battery to some extent while tuning my magic numbers in the trading bot settings.

~1,500 cycles per $16k battery replacement. Shouldn't sell a full cycle for less than ~$15. Don't arbitrage a 1% point of battery life unless it yields at least $0.15. Might just set it at $0.20 per 1% for healthy margin/price-in hassle of battery replacement.

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

#98

Post by ratboy666 »

The elephant in the room -- unfortunately, there cannot be enough batteries made to support this. That is why I invested in Tesla -- don't care about EVs, but the battery play is good! Backup power for personal/family use? I use a Firman generator - 20 litres of fuel per day of operation at load. (here, $30 Canadian). Since the generator was only $300 and load is 3000W, this is a much better deal for me. And... at the rates being bandied about here... if anyone EVERY offers, say, $1/KWh - That grosses me $70 per $30 of gas. I would take that incentive. Note that the generator would pay for itself every 10 days by my reckoning.. And the recycling of the motor is already a solved problem. So... $1/KWh is way too much. $0.50/KWh is also too much (and note that my gasoline pricing is around $1.50/litre at the pump -- $22.41 US for 20 liters ...

So the actual amount should be around 32 cents per KW/h... 50 cents work fine because that factors in "wear and tear" -- do those numbers work for batteries? Of course, buying electricity is 7 to 15 cents/KWh here.

I would want LiFePo4 for this application; at current rates, a 10KWh battery runs $10,000. From that, I determine that I can "just" buy much more effective gas/natural gas/propane burning generators. Something like the Generac 6551. Natural gas is .23/c3 or around $1 for one hour of 7000W operation... actually looking competitive with electricity grid rates (except wear&tear on the generator).

Note that I do have a hybrid car. So, not "anti-electric" by any means. I just don't think that enough batteries can be made for this application. Certainly NOT be 2030 (6 years? Oh really?)

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

#99

Post by nawitus »

cinntaile wrote: post #70
martinflack wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They won't even let people with solar panels feed their excess power to the grid. Is that true? If so, TIL...

This has to do with lack of demand during high PV production. This excess energy still has to go somewhere, it doesn't just disappear. This costs the grid operators money, so either they charge you or don't let you feed the excess power to the grid.

Are you saying the price is negative during high PV production? In sane markets like Finland solar panel owners need to pay for generating electricity to the grid if the price is negative (which is it sometimes).

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

#100

Post by tuatoru »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #95
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If off-grid is competitive, selling at peak prices is a no brainer. So why isn't the utility managing the storage directly then? Aren't they best suited to do this??? Or is this article just saying that EV car batteries could ?

> Aren't they best suited to do this??? They don't have a million EV batteries, purchased outside the scope of this program, sitting around idle and connected to the grid. Their customers do.

Utilities don't yet have a million EV batteries laying around, but they (or specialist EoL battery companies) will soon.

From the abstract:-

> Participation rates fall below 10% if half of EV batteries at end-of-vehicle-life are used as stationary storage.

Half seems conservative to me. There are already lots of startups wanting your end-of-life EV battery.

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