Your Future Home Might Be Powered By Car Batteries (bloomberg.com) 319
Increasingly utilities and automakers are wondering if they could use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. An anonymous reader shares a report: The idea, known as "vehicle-to-grid," is to someday have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours or when the sun simply isn't shining. If it works -- and it's a big if -- renewable energy could get much cheaper and more widely used. "We really, really need storage in order to make better use of wind and solar power, and electric cars could provide it," said Daniel Brenden, an analyst who studies the electricity market at BMI Research in London. "The potential is so huge." Today, fewer than one percent of the world's vehicles are electric, but by 2040 more than half of all new cars will run on the same juice as televisions, computers and hair dryers, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Once cars and everything else are fed from the same source, they can share the same plumbing.
Take the car away (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they made a car specifically for this use pattern. And they took away the car and called what was left the "Powerwall". Sure, you stick it to a wall rather than ambulate it all over town, but I think it works out just fine.
Re:Take the car away (Score:5, Interesting)
The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
My wife has a Tesla with a 240 mile range, and on 95% of days she uses less than 20% of the capacity. The rest could be available for energy price arbitrage.
The car starts charging at 2 am, when electricity prices are lowest. The power companies need to fill the gap from 4pm to 7pm when power use peaks, but solar is fading.
Full accounting of costs (Score:2)
The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
Not quite. You also have to factor in the cost of the additional cycles on the battery pack, the additional warranty and maintenance costs that may result, the depreciation on the vehicle from this additional use, and perhaps a few others I'm not thinking of before I've had my morning caffeine. Doesn't make using the car battery a bad idea but one should have a full accounting of all the costs. I think depreciation likely would be the biggest cost since inverters probably wouldn't be super expensive once
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I don't have a powerwall, solar panels, or an electric car. But I could get on board if I had all of those things. Let's say I had a 200-mile range car. My commute is 10 miles. The vast majority of the time, I only need 20 miles of charge - let's double it for safety to 40 miles. That means I'm only using 20% of my battery's capacity. I could see telling the car to go ahead and try to make me some money with the remaining 60% most of the time, overriding this when I know I have a trip or something. The algo
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The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
Not quite. You also have to factor in the cost of the additional cycles on the battery pack, the additional warranty and maintenance costs that may result, the depreciation on the vehicle from this additional use, and perhaps a few others I'm not thinking of before I've had my morning caffeine. Doesn't make using the car battery a bad idea but one should have a full accounting of all the costs. I think depreciation likely would be the biggest cost since inverters probably wouldn't be super expensive once they are produced at scale. I could easily see the added depreciation being a few thousand dollars though you obviously wouldn't be hit with that until you sell the vehicle.
Personally I see car batteries as more of an emergency standby solution than a routine use. Not much use for powering the home if you have to take the car to work. Could be a nice little extra layer of security for power outages or to manage energy costs and usage though.
Exactly! As I understand it, even the most advanced of the batteries that we have today are limited by the number of power-cycles. Using a car for this on a continual basis would quickly reduce the battery lifetime, range, etc. As a car owner, why would you do this unless there is some reward to offset the value loss?
The owner/user is responsible for any liability resulting from issues when charging the battery pack as part of their insurance. Who accepts liability for any battery failures when the car
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Exactly! As I understand it, even the most advanced of the batteries that we have today are limited by the number of power-cycles. Using a car for this on a continual basis would quickly reduce the battery lifetime, range, etc.
The idea is not to discharge the car, because you wouldn't have anything left to drive on.
And modest draws and charges don't count for a power cycle. That just happens every day.
Regardless, I'm not keen on the idea, and since in home use, weight is not a factor, so the lead acid family of batteries would function very well for home storage. Take a bank of them and store them under a false floor in the garage or under the base of a patio if you want them outside. Then they are there all of the time.
Re: Full accounting of costs (Score:2)
so the lead acid family of batteries would function very well for home storage
I suppose lead-acid car batteries would suffice if you didn't draw them down much each night... but what's the point if you can't use your full capacity without damaging 'em?? This calls for marine or deep cycle batteries that don't automatically become damaged when drained heavily.
Re: Full accounting of costs (Score:2)
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That's what a friend who lived off-grid used. Shed full of marine batteries. Cheap, durable, and easy to replace. About every 3 months he'd test all the batteries, replace any that were wearing out, close the door, and maintenance was done.
Compared to a power wall, that was far cheaper, stored vastly more energy, and provided higher power draw. The only thing it didn't have was looks.
Cost versus performance (Score:2)
Regardless, I'm not keen on the idea, and since in home use, weight is not a factor, so the lead acid family of batteries would function very well for home storage
The only big advantage of lead acid batteries over Li-Ion in most use cases is their price tag which is quite a lot lower than Li-Ion. But lead acid batteries are worse on energy density, can require more maintenance, usually have fewer fewer cycles, are more temperature sensitive, worse capacity vs discharge rate, are less environmentally friendly, etc. There are plenty of use cases where lead acid is a fine choice but Li-Ion is the clear performance winner in most use cases. Provided of course the cost
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A fleet of Teslas out there it would represent an interesting amount of buffer capacity, and buffer capacity is very important. With a realtime market price driven mechanism the batteries could be charged when electricity is cheap and discharged when it is expensive(the cost of electricity fluctuates all day long and at peak moments it is very high) . This would be more than an emergency standby but the idea of the emergency buffer is certainly part of it.
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"The rest could be available for energy price arbitrage"
Tesla has been very resistant to using the car battery for anything other than powering the car; I suspect the battery formulation is not suited for it. That said, Tesla hacker wk057@skie.net has a pretty nice off-grid setup with his 44 kW solar array backed up by 191 kWh of Tesla battery pack modules.
https://twitter.com/wk057/stat... [twitter.com]
https://skie.net/skynet/projec... [skie.net]
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That's really cool, but:
Yikes! That battery isn't going to last long if that's the yearly cycle wear!
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The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.
Yep. It makes sense from a capex standpoint; not sure if it makes sense overall. Those batteries degrade with charge-discharge cycle, and the constant cycling could shift the expense of storage directly onto the consumer--a regressive tax when we have enough electric cars (i.e. they're just cars regular folks have), since rich people don't have N cars for N*x income where x is the income of a single-car family.
Batteries are the wrong tech for city-grade storage; and distributed batteries are the kind o
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The problem with this concept since I first heard about it 7-10 years ago is it requires a low (opportunity) cost of power from solar 11am-1pm and vehicles that are plugged in, plus the same stipulation from (solar) 5-7pm. The first window often has people out at lunch (and/or parked at work where the charging cost will be higher), and the second window is at the time people are driving home from work or picking up the kids.
The only real opportunity I see is randomly when there is high wind energy nights an
Re: Take the car away (Score:4)
Hence the powerwall
Re: Take the car away (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why wouldn't powerwall customers have the same concern? Cost of installation is marginally lower in the home or something?
Re: Take the car away (Score:4, Insightful)
The other big issue with V2G is that it needs to use much more complex charging hardware. The current offerings in Norway only work on CHAdeMO, for example.
I think it's more likely that people will use recycled car batteries in a PowerWall type product. There won't be a shortage of them from cars written off for other issues, and most of those packs will have a huge amount of life left in them.
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I think it's more likely that people will use recycled car batteries in a PowerWall type product. There won't be a shortage of them from cars written off for other issues, and most of those packs will have a huge amount of life left in them.
Exactly. In many uses a relatively lightweight lithium battery is critical. But or home use, weight is seldom an issue.
And despite being pretty ancient, the Lead/acid battery is pretty darn good technology. If they are treated right, they last for a long time. I have 15 year old pulls that are gel cell and they are going strong yet. I use them to power portable transmitters
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Employers' parking lots with plugs are going to be a big deal in the future.
Alaska is there already. For a different purpose, but there.
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Lose your job, you die. That's how capitalism works.
LOL... Well, nice try. I lost my job for 6 months just as the 2000 down turn started and my youngest was born (and subsequently was hospitalized for complications) AND my former employer sued me.
My family and I didn't starve, though we did draw unemployment (After it was initially denied). The mortgage got paid, food was on the table AND my legal fees where all paid.
How was that possible?
Simple. I was raised to be responsible for me and my family and I had savings and little debt (nothing but the mort
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Lexus probably figures that people plugging in for cost reasons will buy Toyotas, and luxury buyers who care for the environment (by purchasing a car ensconced in leather, but I digress...) will spring for the full-electric. I'm sure they are missing where the two Venn circles intersect, but that might not be a terribly large group.
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What actually happened was motors, motive power and CPUs got cheap enough that the benefits to having several motors, engines or computers outweighed the inconvenience, and in some cases are outsourced
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I thought they made a car specifically for this use pattern. And they took away the car and called what was left the "Powerwall". Sure, you stick it to a wall rather than ambulate it all over town, but I think it works out just fine.
Nah, you'll still drive the batteries powering your home around.
In the future we're all going to be dead-ass broke and living out of our cars (which are all going to be electric so we can mooch power using an extension cord from Starbucks.
Re:Take the car away (Score:4)
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Not to mention that, at the moment, batteries are very specific to a particular car, which happens to be one of the largest capital investments a family can make.
If you are looking at a car as an investment, you're doing it wrong.
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I thought they made a car specifically for this use pattern. And they took away the car and called what was left the "Powerwall". Sure, you stick it to a wall rather than ambulate it all over town, but I think it works out just fine.
Certainly the technology is there to plug a car in and utilize it's battery to share power. Bu I'd much prefer the Powerwall concept, as almost all the time, I'd be wanting to charge my car, not send power to other people with it.
Batteries (Score:2, Insightful)
This is silly. Battery technology hasn't matured so workarounds like this aren't really solving any problems. By the time there was widespread adoption of this (my guess 5-10 years) technology will have moved on and the issues we think are a big deal will be different.
Build the base first, then expand (Score:2, Interesting)
We're still far away from batteries reaching their peak performance. We develop more powerful batteries (ok, dear nitpickers, accumulators) that can store more power per kilogram of battery at a rather fast pace, and I guess discussing today what we'll do with them in 10 or 20 years when "everyone" has a battery powered car (if it ever gets to that, anyway, and the electric car isn't replaced by something completely different in the meantime) is a bit like gazing into the crystal ball.
Let's first of all fin
Re:Build the base first, then expand (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's first of all finish inventing the storage before we ponder spending the energy.
Lets not. If we spend our lives waiting for perfection before starting anything then we will never get anything done.
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I'm not talking about perfection, I'm talking about knowing whether we're putting our money on the right horse. Right now, energy driven cars seem to be the future, but we don't even know what kind of energy storage is the best. When it comes to energy density, the ICE and petrol are still superior to other forms on a pure power-per-kg level. We should first of all figure out how to replace this, and what to replace that with, before we start planning a whole house around it only to discover that eventually
Battery powered EVs are the future (Score:2)
Right now, energy driven cars seem to be the future, but we don't even know what kind of energy storage is the best.
Best is what works and has the best combination of economic utility and environmental friendliness. It seems pretty clear that battery powered EVs are the most credible option moving forward. Lots of advantages not the least of which is that the fuel source is abstracted from the vehicle and that there is existing infrastructure for refueling. You can power a battery powered EV with gasoline or coal or nuclear or wind or solar or anything else you can make into electricity. The value of that abstraction
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Right now, energy driven cars seem to be the future,
The suggestion of a possible alternative is intriguing. Please elaborate!
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Dammit, I neglected something that could be nitpicked about.
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Brilliant!
This revolutionary technology will surely produce the next Unicorn [wikipedia.org]!
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...before we start planning a whole house around it only to discover that eventually we'll start over from scratch.
You don't need to plan whole houses around this. The internal house wiring isn't going to change, because any tech that requires that will never take off (because no one is going to spend that much to retro-fit existing houses).
You only need to leave extra room in new-construction garages for the charging/storage/grid-tie equipment. If that never happens... well, I've never met a homeowner who has complained about having to MUCH space in the garage.
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We didn't do that for smartphones, computers, screens, or virtually any other tech. Why would it be a sensible strategy here?
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Because power, while critical for electronic devices, is pretty much a no-brainer. There is only one way to power your cellphone, with a rechargeable battery. You certainly won't put any kind of fuel cell into it, you won't power it with gas or an ICE. Size restraints and the mobility requirement dictate the form of power supply here.
A house or even car is kinda different in that aspect.
Power versus weight versus space (Score:2)
There is only one way to power your cellphone, with a rechargeable battery. You certainly won't put any kind of fuel cell into it, you won't power it with gas or an ICE.
Actually you might power your cell phone with gas, just not directly. The gas is turned into electricity at the power station instead of in the device. That is the advantage of batteries. You can use the most practical fuel source available. It becomes like using money instead of bartering. The fuel source gets abstracted from the device.
A house or even car is kinda different in that aspect.
A car is no different than a cell phone regarding power versus weight. It's bigger but there still is a power vs weight vs space budget to deal with. Any mobile devi
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Do you really care how much the "power plant" of your home weighs? I mean, beyond the capabilities of the foundation you put it on, of course.
Battery development (Score:2)
We're still far away from batteries reaching their peak performance.
Probably true though I think we're pretty close to the limit for Li-Ion batteries. The question is how soon can the next battery technology get to market.
We develop more powerful batteries (ok, dear nitpickers, accumulators) that can store more power per kilogram of battery at a rather fast pace,
Define "fast pace". Energy density of batteries has been increasing at something like 5-8% per year. Nice but that means it takes 10-15 years to double. Not exactly Moore's law though with a long term perspective I suppose that's pretty decent progress. I don't know that I'd call it fast paced but it's good enough to be optimistic about the future of
Seems dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
The average age of a car on the road in the USA is 11.5 years. Personally, I drive a 1998. If only 50% of new cars in 2040 will be electric, then we're looking at sometime between 2050 and 2060 for a slight majority of cars on the road to be electric. So this plan had better work with a fairly small percentage of cars being electric, or it'll come way too late to do any good.
A better use of electric cars may be simply using their depleted otherwise-worthless batteries as part of the grid. That way you don't have to convince people to let their battery be worn down, either -- getting people to allow their car battery to be used to balance the grid will really require that they be getting free replacement batteries, because it can't be good for battery longevity.
Country dependant (Score:4, Interesting)
In some country, petrol IS NOT the thing stations profit the most.
At least in several places in Europe, stations profit the most from their shops (selling snacks and other small useful item. At a high price than in the city, but more convenient or in an emergency, as they are open 24h and on your way on the highway) and their cafe (taking breaks is heavily recommended by massive campaign and even legally required in some driver professions)
In fact several chain of stations are actually owned by chain stores.
The petrol is mostly use as a way to attract people to the shops/cafes.
As soon as electrical cars became a thing some stations started to install charging station as a way to attract even more customer to the shops and cafes.
Re:Country dependant (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true in most countries. The profit margin at most stations is pennies per/L, in Canada it's around 0.02-0.045/L. The US? Most stations make around 0.10-0.25/Gal. Thing is, here in Canada we have those charging stations in places like that and they don't draw people in. People simply leave their cars and fuck it up for everyone else. When it takes 30min-2hrs for a charge instead of 8mins for a fillup, you can already see the problems. In Ontario, if we had massive numbers of electric vehicles most small stations would need 40-100 bays to recharge. Distances are too large, the same in the US. Unlike Europe, people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america.
An example: A person living in London, Ontario would spend 2.5-3hr/one way to commute to Toronto. It's cheaper to drive, then take the train or live in the surrounding communities(Brampton/Mississauga/etc where a starter home can be $1.4m+) in the GTA for most people, unless you're making a combined income over $150k/year. Even at that, you're going to find times where you're under that 60-day lose your job and lose your home. Even at that, you're probably considering finding a new place to live because you're being priced out of your own neighborhood. Another example, I was looking at house prices in Woodstock, Ontario. A house built in 1810, that is under 1600sqft(148sqm) with knob & tube wiring, galvanized pipes, maybe windows from the 1940's(single pane w/winter storm windows that have to be attached). Were running in the $340k range, the average income in Woodstock(and the county of Oxford) is around $43k/year.
These ideas are good in high-dense urban areas, anywhere else they fall flat on the realities of the world.
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Knob and tube wiring! What a joy. Well, you couldn't have an EV there anyway.
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Distances are too large, the same in the US. Unlike Europe, people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america.
You vastly overestimate how common this is.
Even in cities like Los Angeles where large cities have sprouted in the desert for long commuters to buy cheap houses, the vast majority of Los Angeles commuters do not live in such cities.
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people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america
Unless you mean per week, you are way off. Average commute in the U.S. is about 27 minutes (one way). About 7.3% of U.S. workers commute an hour or more each way. For comparison, about 8.5% walk, bike or take public transit (and those groups are not mutually exclusive. About 23% of those with commutes more than an hour use public transportation).
So almost all commuters who drive themselves to work could simply charge at home if they drove an EV. Even current ones with the lowest range (about 58 miles for 20
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Unlike Europe, people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america. An example: A person living in London, Ontario would spend 2.5-3hr/one way to commute to Toronto.
If that's common I'd say insanity is common in North America, in Europe you'd rather rent a broom closet than spend six hours a day driving. I know all of three people that have had a commute close to that and it was a highly temporary thing being stretched between needing a new job and family commitments.
These ideas are good in high-dense urban areas, anywhere else they fall flat on the realities of the world.
You make it sound like living in a city is the exception and not the norm. I live in Norway (215th in population density), even less sparsely populated than the US (188th in population density) but people
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As soon as electrical cars became a thing some stations started to install charging station as a way to attract even more customer to the shops and cafes.
And that might bring in some traffic, but most people are going to be recharging from home on their daily commute. Charging walls will never be as popular or bring in as much traffic as petrol pumps did.
Worse yet for these convenience stores, it might be easy for Grocery stores, Department stores like Walmart, etc... to put up charging ports outside their stores - maybe even give free power if you spend over £X ($Y). The fuel station/convenience store concept is long-term doomed in most places. Tou
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I've heard speculation that if 20% of people switch to electric it won't be profitable for most service stations to provide petrol which would accelerate the switchover process dramatically.
Doesn't sound like Informed speculation. In 2016 there were 268.8 million vehicles were registered in the U.S. (this is all vehicles not just passenger cars, but the math is pretty much the same). This is similar to saying that gas stations were not profitable when there were only 215 million - which was 1996.
The number of gas stations in the U.S. has actually dropped a lot of over the last 25 years, from 210,000 to 122,000 over roughly the same period as the business moved to the convenience store with lot
Market (Score:2, Interesting)
I love markets, but so often, clever people try to create markets for their products, rather than solving people's real problems.
It turns into yet another, suck the life out of the little guy, for the profit of some new venture.
The bottom line in business should be that what you are doing is genuinely worthwhile and creates genuine value for humanity.
And people need the integrity to answer for themselves honestly whether what they are doing it of genuine value, or merely profiting off whatever "wonderful wo
Why? (Score:2, Funny)
I can't believe people still think this is a good idea. These people still don't seem to have spotted that the reason you plug your car in is so that it's fully charged when you want to go somewhere. So in ten years' time, you'll hear this conversation:
"Quick! My waters have broken! Get me to the hospital!"
"Wait, no, sorry, can't go, it's been cloudy all week and the grid's left our car with only 30 miles range. Can you hold it for an hour until it's charged enough?"
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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Your car would be connected to the grid, you would be powering your whole neighborhood and even the steel mill a couple miles down the road.
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While you may think that it is wonderful to live in your tiny hovel in a mild climate region
It's probably something like 6 kWh overnight for the whole three-story building with 200 square meters of residential area.
My modest home uses an average of 90kWh per day. That's an annual average.
I'll shed a tear for you. Meanwhile, maybe in the years to come, your people will learn to build properly?
Commercial usage is the killer. My small business uses over 3,000kWh per day and it is not a major consumer. I can't even imaging how much some of the big factories or shopping malls must use.
True, but surely that is outside of the scope of TFA. Unless you live IN the business, of course.
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These people still don't seem to have spotted that the reason you plug your car in is so that it's fully charged when you want to go somewhere
Meh. You'll configure a minimum charge level for your car, and once it's drawn down to that level you'll stop selling power. The car will have 300+ miles per range, so for most people setting it to retain ~150 miles of charge will work just fine. Those who need a bit more will set it higher.
Also, I expect that a huge part of home storage won't be the batter in your car, it will be a battery that used to be in a car. As car batteries degrade they'll get to a point where their storage capacity per weight is
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Fly in the ointment (Score:4, Insightful)
Transportation accounts for about 70% as much energy consumption as electricity [wikimedia.org]. If you convert all those ICE cars into EVs, the electric rates won't be cheap during the night when they're charging. Overnight will become the new peak consumption hours, when electricity is most expensive.
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On the other hand, if the infrastructure is currently underutilized at night, then this move to nighttime usage could be a good thing.
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12.5 cents per KwH here in Virginia as far as I know. Charge any time I want to. Get out of California and other such states that allow pricing on a time of day basis and improve your life.
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Transportation accounts for about 70% as much energy consumption as electricity [wikimedia.org]. If you convert all those ICE cars into EVs, the electric rates won't be cheap during the night when they're charging. Overnight will become the new peak consumption hours, when electricity is most expensive.
No... If the system is properly designed, with everyone trying to buy low/sell high, and large amounts of storage in cars, there won't BE any peaks/slumps in demand. Not under normal operation, anyway. There's still the "a hurricane's coming, so everyone sets their cars to charge to full and not discharge" type scenarios to deal with. Even then, though, the power prices would spike to the point where a lot of people would probably still want to sell to make a buck.
No it wont. (Score:2)
I recognize that in terms of how things are priced today that this seems like a great idea. However, the capacity of batteries is going to greatly increase while the price of them is going to drop like a rock. Effectively, things will get to the point where people would ask, "wait, why would you even do that?" leaving off the implication that batteries are dirt cheap.
Solar and battery are going to power most every home in the future and might even have power left over to charge your car because it's going
Don't tell this to my employer. (Score:4, Funny)
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Hell, whole towns could do this. Why bother setting up energy distribution if you can just make people drive it in.
Why not expand this to water? Make people haul it in with no support from the government. Works for Flint, right?
Battery wear (Score:5, Interesting)
(Disclaimer: EV owner, researcher in relevant field, and I was once asked to evaluate a research project on V2G in an European country)
The idea is interesting, and may well have an impact in countries with a lot of non-controllable power (wind, sun, but to a degree nuclear and other baseloads too), if price oscillations are large enough. The article mentions a potential of USD 40 a month, which is just above a buck a day. Would you risk not having enough charge in your car to get home for such a pittance?
More importantly, there is no mention of battery wear. Batteries are much more expensive than the energy they store through their lifetime. Teslas have actually a very limited lifetime of about 500 cycles (since the batteries are large, there is no need for more lifetime—it's actually smart to use short-lived, cheaper NCA batteries as Tesla does), which means that, if you assume USD 200 / kWh by 2030 [theccc.org.uk], each kWh will cost 40 cents only in battery depreciation: that's a lot more than what the energy costs, and will likely more than offset those 40 USD a month. (Yes, there are longer-lived batteries; they are also more expensive) (Yes, battery wear is not just a matter of cycling, it's also storing at high voltage, rate of charge/discharge at which temperature, and lots of other things)
V2G is very interesting for grid companies as a solution to their energy storage problems, but they seem to intend to exploit the lack of consumer understanding of EV cost dynamics: the real cost of a kWh is the battery wear, not the actual energy. There is a reason why these companies are not buying the batteries directly.
I believe V2G has more potential in "private grid" applications: e.g. if you have a cabin in the woods with no option of grid connection, you could drive to it with you EV and power it from your batteries while you are there (a home uses a lot less power than a car); or you could transfer some charge to a vehicle that ran out of it on the road (actually the Toyota Mirai has a similar feature, a ChaDeMo outlet).
Re:Battery wear (Score:5, Informative)
Teslas have actually a very limited lifetime of about 500 cycles
Incorrect, Tesla use Panasonic cells rated for 3000 cycles.
500 cycles at 250 miles per charge would only be 125,000 miles, which happens to also be the warranty on the packs. Lifetime being a bell curve approximately 50% of packs would qualify for warranty replacement if that was the case. But more over, lots of Tesla cars are up to 200k+, and Tesla tested up to 750k.
Even the original Nissan Leaf has proven to be more durable than that, with taxi firms putting over 200k miles on the original pack without any problems. The newer 30 and 40kWh models might not last so long though.
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They do not degrade to uselessness. It's never happened. There are 13 year old RAV4s with nickel-metal hydride batteries that work just fine. Jay Leno's 100+ year old Baker Electric works perfectly with the original battery. Lithium batteries in Tesla Roadster autos are still working fine 10 years on, though they have lost a good 10-40% or so of capacity, which is due to overheating or overcharging. Tesla figured out, and now others are too, how to intelligently manage the charging to avoid forming dendrite
Supercapacitors (Score:2)
Supercapacitors in cars instead of or in addition to batteries could be the hot setup:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/... [engadget.com]
The thing is, if your car is giving up its charge to the grid, and you suddenly want to go somewhere, that's not ideal. But if the car has a supercapcitor that can charge in 10 minutes, then it works much better. The power wall for storing charge could come into play by charging the car quickly, since drawing that kind of amperage through the grid wouldn't be possible - 200 amp service
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Supercapacitors have 1/100 the energy density of modern batteries. They've got better power density. Charging the battery that fast might melt your cable, though: a 48kWh battery charging in 10 minutes draws 1,200 amps. That's enough to vaporize a 1cm-thick steel rod explosively (there would be an expanding fireball detonating in your face almost instantly).
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The quoted article says 180 watt-hrs/Kg for the supercapacitor, as opposed to 100 -120 Wh/Kg for lithium, so its not a capacity problem.
As for melting wires, yeah, that's something else to solve. Use 1000 batteries and wire them in series temporarily during the charge, so you connect up to 50,000 volts with smaller amps? Have to be real careful with that, of course. Or maybe just use huge charging cables... probably need a hydraulic arm to life and connect them!
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The quoted article says 180 watt-hrs/Kg for the supercapacitor, as opposed to 100 -120 Wh/Kg for lithium
That's the specific energy, not the energy density.
Supercapacitors range around 0.05 MJ per liter of physical space, whereas lithium ion batteries range 0.9-2.63 MJ per liter, depending on chemistry. That means the 18kWh battery that takes up twice the volume of the rear seats in the Chevrolet Volt would be larger than the entire car if it were a supercapacitor, and weigh only about twice as much as the battery as-is.
Yes, it would be about 40 times bigger. Think styrofoam versus iron.
Use 1000 batteries and wire them in series temporarily during the charge, so you connect up to 50,000 volts with smaller amps?
You'll need an
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Great Solution / Battery Wear (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of pure EVs store significantly more power than the average home uses in a day so there's a good chance it can be used to store renewable energy. Even if people can't get renewable power, they're valuable for levelling power use. Part of what keeps electricity costs high is that our power use swings wildly during the day so power systems need to be designed to generate more power than will ever be used.
Also most EV's use the much more reliable LIthium-Iron-Phosphate class batteries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery) which wear out at a much slower rate than most lithiums and rarely if ever catch on fire. Tesla I believe doesn't use these more reliable batteries but the trade-off is the ability to pack more power in a smaller space / weight which is why they have some of the smallest batteries for their incredible capacity on the market.
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LiFePo batteries are the usual choice for electrical car conversions. I wish we could use SCiBs, but those aren't really available for general use,
Go even further (Score:2)
Get solar panels with a battery buffer, rely on the grid as little as possible. Solar panels not enough for your "needs"? Reduce your consumption, switch to power-saving alternatives. It's good for everyone.
Doesn't make sense (Score:2)
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Isn't that Tesla's plan for powerwalls?
What's going on here? (Score:2)
So they're pumping electrically-charged juice through the plumbing now? Why are they not using the same pipes as the internet?!
it's called off grid (Score:2)
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Well, presumably, the batteries don't charge themselves. So the thing powering the battery is powering your house. The battery is just storage so you get favorable rates.
Physical energy transfer (Score:4, Interesting)
You could "fill up" your car in one location, drive home, and pump that power in to your local grid. If the local prices were high enough it could be affordable. You could get some sort of "energy truckers", hauling batteries across territory from grid to grid.
That would make things interesting, though I can't imagine it would be terribly efficient. It would encourage companies and governments not to build out proper electrical grids.
" -- and it's a big if -- " (Score:2)
" -- and it's a big if -- "
Ah, Bloomberg "news", throwing shade on the idea that many cars could ever be electric. Mad, mad! I tell you! Gods and Monsters!
Of course the idea will work. It can't not work. There ain't no "if" involved. Electric cars will lower our power bills, aid grid overload, and walk the dogs while powerwashing the sidewalks. Blackouts will lose their terror all over the world. The upsides of electric cars are now obvious and I can't wait for a VW Beetle cheapie version for the Rest of Us
Say it isn't so. (Score:2)
This is NOT what power companies want. Your local power company, who you send your bill to, probably has zero say in the actual generation of power. They buy power from the grid (think of the guys in NY mining bitcoin) and the quantity of watts they purchase has been agreed upon far in advance. Otherwise how would the large plants know how to schedule for demand? And vice versa; when home users decide willy-nilly to "sell back" and there is too much power available, what happens then? You don't just spin do
Re:Too much hype... (Score:4, Informative)
400v isn't dangerous though, it's the amperage that's behind the 400v that's dangerous. You can go and get hit with 10,000-50,000v right now pull the wire off a spark plug on any car, it'll hurt but it won't kill you even if it's grounded through you to the earth. Low amp, high voltage. But, you can kill yourself off the starter motor which can draw upwards of 300-900amps from that 12v battery. Haven't even started with home 1ph-120v, or 3ph-208v used in industry.
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Current flow occurs when there is a potential difference across a resistance. The battery's internal resistance, its tendency to heat up rapidly, or its lack of total power would be the only modifier. A spark plug is throwing 25,000V across an air gap with enormous resistance, so discharges a few mA; a short circuit would discharge that 25,000V at an incredibly-high amperage, and for a shorter duration (yeah that's a hell of a thing to consider, right?).
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400v isn't dangerous though, it's the amperage that's behind the 400v that's dangerous.
That's a silly point to bring up, though. You only need a few milliamps at that voltage to kill you, so unless you are arguing that the battery cannot deliver a few milliamps this point is meaningless. Current is determined only by your body's resistance via I = V/R, and your body's resistance is a function of a number of things - one of them is voltage. Dry skin will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a kOhm or two. That's 200-400mA, so you are dead.
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Grabbing the 12V terminal of a car battery that can deliver several hundred amps is not dangerous. Starter motors and other magnetic devices can throw off a nasty inductive kick that could boast the voltage at their input to several hundred volts if they are disconnected suddenly. I suppose under the right conditions, that could be fatal. But it is not really the high current that will get you, it is the boosted voltage and the time that the current flows.
A resistive heater that pulled several hundred amps
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"The potential is so huge." Tesla battery pack voltage potential is around 400 V, dangerous for human life, but not exactly "huge".
You need to understand the relationship between voltage and current. Nuclear submarines use a 250 V battery pack as an emergency power source. That is capable of powering an emergency motor to move the boat, keeping the lights and critical systems on, and restarting the reactor in an emergency. Compared to your car and typical house, I would consider it quite "huge".
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"Of course with electric cars, no more "road trip" vacations or driving the kids off to college because it can only go 100 to 200 miles on a charge and then it takes 8 hours to recharge."
Maybe not:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/... [engadget.com]
And if it won't do "road trip", I'm not going to buy it, so someone needs to figure out road trip with or without a supercapacitor. 1st leg of my vacation last month was >800 miles.
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Yeah, there seems to be a battery breakthrough story every couple weeks. I bit really hard on the 10X boost over lithium that was described as "nanowire batteries" in I think Dec 2007 issue of Spectrum, but the scientists were scooped up by offers from I think it was a Saudi University where the thing was probably suppressed for what it would do to the Arab oil business.
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It was about 14 miles to work, and 14 miles back, and I was not about to waste an hour or more each way just to arrive all grody / sweaty both at work and at home for as long as I could do that, which would be until I got run over on some of the more dangerous roads I know of. Hilly, curvy, narrow, a bicyclist has a death wish if he rides those roads. And of course I retired 6 years ago at 64 years of age, and have doubts about really being able to pedal that far anyway every day even if the roads were