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EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

spectrum.ieee.org

211–220 of 260 posts

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#211

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…

> This feels gimmicky and fragile If anything is very much anti-fragile. Decentralized batteries would only make the grid more resilient both to outages and overloads.

my comparison is between EV batteries and stationary batteries, not a system without batteries (which is in any case unworkable if input is solely based on renewables).

a stationary distributed system seems superior in many ways to the mobile version (more capacity, more predictable in both charging and discharging schedules, potentially less costly battery technologies etc). if such a system happens anyway, I'd see the issue of linking the EV fleet as secondary

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#212

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…

People value things differently. You'd have to pay me way more than the 8 cents/kwh it cost me to use my battery. I'd want to be heavily compensated for the inconvenience of replacing the battery or car prematurely.

From GPs post its actually $5 plus 8c per KW.

That seems more reasonable for the owner, but no utility co would pay it.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are special subsidies for rooftop solar here in the US (Solar Investment Tax Credit). Are there not subsidies for solar where you live? https://www.seia.org/initiatives/solar-investment-tax-credit... > The solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is one of the most important federal policy mechanisms to support the growth of solar energy in the United States. Since the ITC was enacted in 2006, the U.S. solar industry…

Not any more, other than no sales tax on the panels.

??

It's part of the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" (and at a higher rate than before): https://www.solar.com/learn/inflation-reduction-act/

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#214

I don't understand the discrepancy between EV kWh and house battery kWh. Some cars have > 100 kWh capacity. Why do I pay > 1000$ per kWh for a house battery? At some point it is cheaper to just buy a car, even if you would never drive it. A Tesla Powerwall has 13 or so kWh? Why don't they use the car battery with nearly 10 times as much capacity? It is just unit prices that are far better for cars? Is the charge/disc…

As someone who recently self-installed home batteries (LiFePo), I learned quite a bit about what drives up prices. It's not regulation. If anything state incentives in California can drive down the prices (if you qualify for them), and federal incentives drop the price by 30%, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. In my experience, the big cost with home batteries are the same things that make artisinal custom designed and built homes expensive: the labor cost of the complex system design, installation and integration, and the premium charged because they are still marketed as a luxury product, not as a basic home appliance.

Why the complexity? It should be easy to install batteries on a house, right? In reality, every house has an idiosyncratic set of challenges and decisions that need to be made when integrating battery storage: What loads do you want to back up, and for how long? Where will the backup sub-panel be installed, and how can the backup circuits be routed to it? Where is a safe location for the battery and the automatic transfer switch to be installed? They are all answerable, but there is no general solution and each one is on a case-by-case basis.

And yes, this all does have to meet electrical codes (which exist for a reason), and needs sign-off by local building authorities, but they are not the main cost obstacle any more than they are for any major electrical upgrade to a house.

Take away the "luxury premium" part, and this also explains why home rooftop solar will always be much more expensive on a per-watt basis than utility scale solar (and yes, utility scale solar doesn't include the cost of transmission, as with any grid scale generation source).

Compare that to an EV, where thousands are assembled with predefined requirements, a known set of inputs, all in a purpose built environment (a factory).

And even better, they come with a standard plug interface that we can use to send power back to the house or the grid! But hold on: if you want power when the grid goes down, you're going to need an islanding transfer switch and perhaps decide which loads to back up. I mean, do you really want to run your 40A jacuzzi heater or your 50A air conditioner off you car battery?

In an ideal future, every house would be built with a standard connector (analogous to USB for phones or EV charger standards) that you could just plug a stationary storage system into. The houses would also be built to include an automatic transfer switch that islands the house during a power outage, and a smart load panel that dynamically decides what loads to back up based on battery capacity and user preferences. But right now, no such standards exist, and no house is built from the start that way, so everything is an expensive retrofit.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#215
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…

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…

The spread between wholesale energy prices between high and low renewable times (with low-compared-to-future renewable penetration) is around $20/MW (it’s not $2 and it’s not usually $200), or about $0.02/kwh, so this isn’t a viable return. I doubt selling into the grid will ever get you retail prices in return (someone had to maintain load power lines).

I think people worry a lot about market access when it doesn’t make sense. The market operators cannot handle the settlement and operations overhead of microscale power generators. They are not offering reliable commitments, and the metering just doesn’t exist at the small scale. Your local PG&E equivalent isn’t equipped to operate an efficient power market, I don’t think.

For context - a “small” scale solar power plant is in the 10s of MWs, which >1000x bigger then a car battery at full output. Utility-scale storage is also in the same ballpark.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#216

I don't understand the discrepancy between EV kWh and house battery kWh. Some cars have > 100 kWh capacity. Why do I pay > 1000$ per kWh for a house battery? At some point it is cheaper to just buy a car, even if you would never drive it. A Tesla Powerwall has 13 or so kWh? Why don't they use the car battery with nearly 10 times as much capacity? It is just unit prices that are far better for cars? Is the charge/disc…

State level regulations around installation driving up prices?

Nope, not that. See my sibling response above.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#217
post #114

I don't understand the discrepancy between EV kWh and house battery kWh. Some cars have > 100 kWh capacity. Why do I pay > 1000$ per kWh for a house battery? At some point it is cheaper to just buy a car, even if you would never drive it. A Tesla Powerwall has 13 or so kWh? Why don't they use the car battery with nearly 10 times as much capacity? It is just unit prices that are far better for cars? Is the charge/disc…

House batteries are never purchased in isolation. They're what amounts to a luxury add-on to a much bigger solar system, so you'd expect to see a "markup". That may change with the recent rollback of net metering in CA, which is making a battery system a requirement to reach break even on cost.

> That may change with the recent rollback of net metering in CA, which is making a battery system a requirement to reach break even on cost.

NEM3.0 doesn't make a battery a requirement to break even on costs, it just extends the payback time of solar without batteries by 3-5 years. It reduces the still absurdly long payback time of home battery storage somewhat, though. Only when you can sell power back to the grid with batteries at peak wholesale rates will batteries have anything like solar's payback time.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#218

I don't understand the discrepancy between EV kWh and house battery kWh. Some cars have > 100 kWh capacity. Why do I pay > 1000$ per kWh for a house battery? At some point it is cheaper to just buy a car, even if you would never drive it. A Tesla Powerwall has 13 or so kWh? Why don't they use the car battery with nearly 10 times as much capacity? It is just unit prices that are far better for cars? Is the charge/disc…

Car manufacturers are buying every battery they can.

If we reach a point where there is an actual secondary market for used EV batteries, the house battery market will start to boom. But 10+ year old batteries are still 85-90% healthy mostly, so it might take a while...

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#219

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…

Battery swapping allows you to have both EVs and the benefits of decentralized stationary installations. The "gas station" model of battery swapping has a number of features: lower sticker price on cars, key for mass-market adoption; expert battery pack charge and diagnosis, maintenance and repair; extension of pack lifetimes by offering cheaper rates to drivers who only want to go short distances and therefore can u…

Battery swapping has a number of disadvantages: forcing all the cars to use a specific size and shape battery, which may not be great for packaging efficiency. Battery has to be physically more robust to be able to withstand regular handling. It has to be designed to be quickly detachable, because if the battery takes 20 minutes to take out, it's definitely not faster than just charging the thing.

Re: EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free. This functionality is already there. > So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents. This is quite much. If you add other infra overhead, feeding power back into the grid is not going to produce much revenue for the individual unless the selling price is maybe 20 cents above the price when charging. On the other hand, something that MAY make more sense…

For a blackout situation your car won't be of much help: any inverter that is grid tied will refuse to come on as long as there isn't a low impedance functioning grid connection present. Typically they'll measure the conditions for a minute or two, then make the connection (you'll hear a relay trip) and then bit by bit the inverter starts pushing power by advancing its on phase relative to the grid. If that doesn't s…

Fronius have hybrid inverter for 400V lithium batteries, witch are essentially the same used in cars, the missing part is the integration p.v. inverter-car's BMS.

Personally having an EV and a Victron inverter with batteries and same vendor car charger I HATE the fact I can't even adapt charging amps depending on p.v. available power in AC charging.

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