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EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

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Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#91

Post by wongarsu »

danuker wrote: post #44
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, any degradation can all be predicted ahead of time. A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents. So a smart algorithm can decide it's worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents. Buuuut ... Delaying charging till later is free. So another car owner's car might see on the futures…

It worries me that if industrial-purpose batteries cost the same and have similar degradation, grid services will also decide not to charge/discharge if the profit is less than 8 cents. This tells me that Li-Ion batteries are far from the ideal medium for grid storage.

For grid scale storage Li-Ion is a transitional technology at best. It sees interest right now because it's quick to deploy (unlike the much cheaper pumped hydro), and because so much money had been pumped into Li-Ion research and production that other battery technologies have a hard time competing.

If it turns out people don't need all the cycles out their car battery then there's value in capturing that, but new large scale installations will move to other technologies over the next decade or two.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#92

Post by locallost »

Maxion wrote: post #45
locallost wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During most of last year prices in Europe were routinely over 300, 400 even occasionally over 1000 per MWh because there was an energy shortage. At the same time the prices can easily go negative if the conditions are favorable for renewables. It's not crazy to think that you would be paid to charge your car when there is an excess and then get paid a lot when there is a shortage. I don't know who would say no to thi…

My point is mainly that there are plenty of options available to stabilize grid prices that are way cheaper than using EV's. Europes energy crisis is temporary, over time the price fluctuations will go down.

That's actually not true. Let's say your calculation of ~100 per MWh for batteries is correct, we've seen that the wholesale prices were a multiple of that basically this whole year. Nuclear is above that price. I don't think anybody is seriously planning to use car batteries as the backbone of the grid, but as one of the last resorts yes. It makes sense for everybody.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#93

Post by dTal »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #83
college_physics wrote: post #60

This feels gimmicky and fragile. If distributed / decentralized storage is required (sounds like a good idea overall) it is surely better to have stationary installations, with larger batteries and connectivity optimized for that purpose, not using the EV batteries currently developed for moving these two-ton exosceletons to random places... In fact you want to have the option to significantly reduce EV usage as othe…

I came on here to comment that if you do this, it requires that the EVs be connected to the grid. How is that going to happen during the day when a lot of folks are at work, or out and about, and there aren't that many public chargers? I don't think this whole EVs-as-grid-storage really makes sense. When the EVs go into the scrap market, the batteries will likely still have 80% of their range left (if not more, based…

Yeah, the utility of smoothing grid demand overnight seems limited. Nighttime is when demand is least peaky. And if you commit to having the EV charged in the morning, you can't get net energy out which means it can't be used to compensate for lack of sun either. It doesn't seem to solve any problems that we actually have.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#94

Post by est31 »

londons_explore wrote: post #86
dmurray wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents. If you can really treat the whole cost of the battery as X cents per charge cycle, disregarding the lifetime of the car/battery, this won't work at grid scale. Someone else will build a storage facility that just charges and discharges batteries, and they will outcompete rational EV owner…

Rooftop solar outcompetes solar farms because energy from a solar farm pays taxes and distribution costs before it is delivered to a user. Whereas rooftop solar energy is untaxed when it powers your laptop. > It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free" The EV owner has the power electronics 'for free' - ie. they have almost infinite lifespan, and just a capital cost. Additionally, t…

This reminds me of how in Germany, before there has been a value added tax, there'd been a revenue tax. It was lower, but you had to pay it on every $ of revenue, even if your profit margin was very small. So a lot of businesses started to vertically integrate. Once the system switched to one where you get back the tax for the things your business buys, businesses got broken up or grew in only one of the steps of their supply chain.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#95

Post by ffmpegy »

dtech wrote: post #61
causi wrote: post #23

Even if you completely do away with concerns of battery wear, I'd only be willing to participate in this as long as my household still had an ICE vehicle to fall back on. When I get home and plug the car in I don't want to have to think about whether I might want or need to leave the house at a particular time with a particular charge; I just want the charge to be as high as possible as soon as possible.

That is going to be an expensive habit in the future once time-variable pricing is the standard, which I think is inevitable. Charging your car at 6PM is going to be super expensive compared to 3 AM or 1 PM. Also note you'll still have fast-chargers, you don't always need to charge immediately at full capacity at home, just as you wouldn't always top up on gas after every drive.

Just a note for any UK readers that this is coming in sooner than you think. There are already proposals on the Ofgem[1] site to force mandatory half-hourly meter reads that mean energy companies can offer pricing that more closely matches demand.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy...

don't want to be part of that? run your house off your EV and charge it back up at night. my house takes about 6KWh a day, so I could run it for almost a week from my car even if I didn't charge it.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#96

Post by gwbas1c »

ceejayoz wrote: post #52
jonplackett wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need is a ‘no selling electricity today please’ button.

Or "always leave me 150 miles of range".

At that point it's cheaper to buy a car with a smaller battery and use a stationary battery for grid storage.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#97

Post by [deleted] »

iso1210 wrote: post #81
dmurray wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents. If you can really treat the whole cost of the battery as X cents per charge cycle, disregarding the lifetime of the car/battery, this won't work at grid scale. Someone else will build a storage facility that just charges and discharges batteries, and they will outcompete rational EV owner…

This does work today at grid scale, people use their home batteries (either on wheels or not) to charge/discharge to the grid in the UK all the time. If someone builds that storage facility to do it commercially then great. > rooftop solar can't exist without special subsidies Yet it does

[deleted]

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#98

Post by smileysteve »

bluGill wrote: post #68
Yizahi wrote: post #10

Aren't people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid? E.g. imagine you plug in your phone for the night, but instead of a single top up change it is now constantly discharging and charging again. Lifetime of pocket sized batteries is not too great even now, and in such scenario they will go bust 2-3 times faster, in year instead of 3 or so. Also discharge swings would be probably much bigger…

You are missing something: lifetime depends on how much you cycle the battery. If you take the battery from 80% to 50% 5 times feeding the grid you do a lot less damage to the lifetime than just one 100% to 0% cycle, even though the first supplied more power overall to the grid. Smart management of batteries can ensure that this happens.

For some really complex lithium battery theory, if you have no long trips planned, the battery will have less wear sitting at 80% than it will sitting at 100%.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#99

Post by KingOfCoders »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #65

What a joke. Renewables intermittency is not a problem of a user, but problem of the operator of renewable power plant. Government should mandate that any renewable power plant must provide installed power (i.e. 100MW) for at least 24 hours without interruption, independently on weather and if it can't because operator cheapen out on power plant's energy storage, sanction them until bankruptcy.

What a joke. Every candy store should provide insulin free of charge for 1% of customers.
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