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

nature.com

161–170 of 278 posts

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

#161
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.

As a semi-related side question, does anyone have good numbers on how plug-in hybrid batteries deteriorate over time? I bought a (2022) last March and I do a full charge/discharge cycle on it nearly every other day. I've averaged half my miles on electric since buying it... I haven't noticed any range loss ... yet. I know on mine the physical capacity is 14.4 kWh but it'll only let me use a band in the middle (?) of…

I've read that nearly all range reduction occurs in the first year. If you're seeing ~80% usable energy out of it, then it's probably keeping you between 10% to 90% which is probably fine. Another major factor is battery cooling. Some only air cool the batteries, and in a hot climate they will die much quicker that way. It would be nice if the details were made available as not all manufacturers will use the same limits. Even better would be if it were configurable to some degree.

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

#162
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.

As a semi-related side question, does anyone have good numbers on how plug-in hybrid batteries deteriorate over time? I bought a (2022) last March and I do a full charge/discharge cycle on it nearly every other day. I've averaged half my miles on electric since buying it... I haven't noticed any range loss ... yet. I know on mine the physical capacity is 14.4 kWh but it'll only let me use a band in the middle (?) of…

Not a plug-in hybrid, and not data, but I'm down 5-10% total range after 80k miles over 6 years in a plug-in (full) electric vehicle.

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

#163
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> In sane markets like Finland solar panel owners need to pay for generating electricity to the grid if the price is negative If this were the case, why would solar panel owners not stop "selling" power to the grid at their expense when that happens? What incentive would ever exist to pay to put power on the grid?

I think the point is to encourage people to have a way to stop exporting when there is not the demand by passing on the negative price that all generators would see in that situation.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of now-compulsory things started out as voluntary.

Pretty hard to make it compulsory if you can avoid it by (at worst) unplugging your car.

>bryanlarsen, we noticed that your location is at home but your car isn’t plugged in. Please plug it in and drink a verification can within the next 10 minutes to avoid a noncompliance charge

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

#165
1) This only works when the overlap peak electric demand and peak vehicle demand do not overlap. Night time, when the cars sit idle, is also a low demand time of day, and the afternoon energy demand peak coincides partially with the evening commute.

2) The loss of value to the owner based on cycles used needs to take into account that the failure of the battery in a vehicle can be what causes its final retirement, i.e. the condition of the vehicle itself does not justify a new battery expenditure. EVs are more like cell phones than ICE cars, which can have lifespans of over 30 years in the right climate. So losing 10% of your cycles to grid support could mean buying a car at nine years instead of ten years.

Take a $40000 EV with half of the value being in the battery. Financed, say it's $600/month on a six year loan. With a ten year life span that's four years of no payments. With V2G say you lose 10% of your cycles, so you have three "free" years instead of four. Your real cost is 12 * $600 = $7200.

You can't just calculate the pure cost of the battery with V2G, you need to take into account the depreciation on the entire vehicle as it relates to the battery. In fact, we know very little about how BEVs will depreciate.

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

#166
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Not just seasonal, the school busses are also not in use during the day while school is in session, which is unusual for mass transit busses.

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

#167
post #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 t…

Maybe that's because Global Warming isn't the only environmental issue that they're concerned about? We started getting massive bio diversity reduction since the 70s and that wasn't because of AGW. Human consumption of natural resources (esp. habitat) is a huge issue for the environment and "a lot of factories producing ev cars, appliances, and batteries" will accelerate that.

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

#168
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.

As a semi-related side question, does anyone have good numbers on how plug-in hybrid batteries deteriorate over time? I bought a (2022) last March and I do a full charge/discharge cycle on it nearly every other day. I've averaged half my miles on electric since buying it... I haven't noticed any range loss ... yet. I know on mine the physical capacity is 14.4 kWh but it'll only let me use a band in the middle (?) of…

Assuming you're using Chargepoint level 2 chargers (3.3/6.6kW AC, not DC fast chargers), they are reporting energy delivered. There is no data channel to report energy stored; only level 3 (DC fast charge) charging ports establish a data connection.

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

#169
Hypothetically sure - practically? Tough.

Policy will be able to signal enough value for home owners to recoup the costs of degrading their asset (in this car care battery) and provide the margin for whoever is operating all the assets at the same time. I suspect that the players who aggregate across assets will provide a payout for the Tesla owners however that payout is less than the depreciation of their asset as a result. Most people won't be wise though.

Energy arbitrage rarely make sense financially - you could operate an asset for awhile but the high cost of LiON batteries aren't made for energy arbitrage (typically financial differential between peak and off peak is not significant enough).

Again unless there is a valuable pricing signal OR someone like OhmConnect makes significant in roads to market penetration / policy makers / execution of product.

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

#170
post #165

1) This only works when the overlap peak electric demand and peak vehicle demand do not overlap. Night time, when the cars sit idle, is also a low demand time of day, and the afternoon energy demand peak coincides partially with the evening commute. 2) The loss of value to the owner based on cycles used needs to take into account that the failure of the battery in a vehicle can be what causes its final retirement, i.…

And keep in mind it's to store energy from renewables (minus hydropower), i.e. mainly solar and wind. Solar is nonexistent at night. And although it varies, wind is generally strongest during the day and delivers less energy at night. But night-time is exactly when the vehicles are charged in people's homes, at least currently that's the situation and it would necessitate a ton of new infrastructure to change that. High voltage charging everywhere - ideally even DC charging and the necessary transformers, power cables etc. Even for street parking, because that's where a lot of cars are parked. So assuming there will be more EVs and we want to reach those net zero goals politicians always talk about we'd need charging stations everywhere.

Meanwhile in the real world, here is the result when the green revolution doesn't go as imagined, due to failures in planning and mismanagement. Case study Germany:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/gro...

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