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EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

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Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#101

Post by gwbas1c »

dahfizz wrote: post #57

This boils down to "There are lots of EV batteries, we can use them as storage!". It seems to ignore practical issues: People drive during the day, and charge at night. So you could use EVs as a buffer during the night, but they still need to be charged. So EVs are still going to be a net energy consumer during the night, when you need the storage the most (no solar production). I think the best course of action is t…

> So EVs are still going to be a net energy consumer during the night, when you need the storage the most (no solar production)

Solar isn't the only green energy source, there's also wind, hydro, nuclear...

Historically, electricity consumption is low at night. With the conventional grid, nighttime charging is a net boom because it brings load when the grid has excess capacity.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#102

Post by nagisa »

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…

The important part is that it isn’t necessary for people to use their cars for the _public_ good for this idea to work.

If there's an economic incentive for EV owners to use V2H to reduce their _own_ load during the time of low generation (and thus high prices), then the setup would already do a great job at balancing the grid.

People aren’t dumb and will be able to figure out where the break-even point is and at what price point it makes sense for them to discharge. Today the only problem is the availability of the V2H tech. My belief is that the _only_ important change that needs to happen is a govt. mandate for V2H support in vehicles and home chargers. Supporting this is quite cheap, and today’s implementations of V2L/H are just price gouging on the novelty basis.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#103

Post by bluedino »

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…

Doesn't the average US household have 2 cars? And probably higher in the households that can afford a new Tesla?

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#104

Post by ffmpegy »

jonplackett wrote: post #43
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.

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

I use an app for my home heating that lets me define a schedule every day. If I'm going out I can turn it down or off, and if I have guests over I can boost the hot water.

It already has an EV charger plugin, so I'm in complete control of my selling energy back to the grid if I want to use it.

Some of the comments on this post feel like the "government is coming for your guns" level of foaming-at-the-mouth.

Remember the ultimate aim is to use energy more efficiently and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, not make it pointless or difficult to live life.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#106

Post by ffmpegy »

dahfizz wrote: post #82
dtech wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every ignoring that most cars aren't used every day, most cars are parked during the day and peak solar generation time.

> most cars aren't used every day Huge citation needed. > most cars are parked during the day Yes, parked somewhere where there is no V2G infrastructure. By the time we pay millions of V2G charging stalls, we would be better off just buying actual grid scale storage.

https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/02/cars-are-parked-9...

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#107

Post by pjc50 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #35
discordance wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300/kWh for home storage is readily available. E.g. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-battery-24v-200ah/

True, there are better prices by now. But 5kWh? I thought my smartphone would have that by now... Perhaps 200kWh is a bit exaggerated. And yes you also need a good quality inverter for your home that synchronizes with the net, but I actually don't believe this to be expensive high tech... Ideally I wouldn't want to put the energy I generate with solar, wind or differently back into the power net. In my country you ba…

Phones are more like 10-15 watt-hours, not kWh.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#108

Post by zopa »

greenthrow wrote: post #62
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…

We are not talking about multiple 0-100% cycles daily. The places where pilot programs have been run always left the car with some amount of charge so it can be driven, and you don't normally charge NMC car batteries to 100%. Vehicle batteries have 8 year 100k mile warranties today, and those manufacturers who have spoken on this topic have said that utilizing your battery as grid storage will not violate the warrant…

Posting a question in an internet forum counts as doing research, surely?

It’s much more persuasive to allow reasonable-sounding questions to arise and receive polite, well-thought-out answers, as happened here, than to have everyone chanting in unison. The latter looks like a lie even when it’s actually the truth.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#109

Post by neallindsay »

dmurray wrote: post #74
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…

> 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…

"X cents per charge cycle" is a bit simpler than the reality. The actual wear cost of charging/discharging a big EV battery is cheaper in the middle and more expensive at the extremes.

I already have to own a car for short trips most days and an occasional long trip. And when I'm not going on a long trip I have a lot of extra battery capacity that I can rent to the grid at extremely low (additional) cost to me.

A dedicated battery storage facility on the other hand has to justify the entire price of the battery.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#110

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #99
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.

We already have that, like when store have obligation to take old electrical appliance for recycling when you buy new one.
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