I read that in a number of US states power companies are pushing back on net metering. Even though most areas allow separation of generation and distribution industries, many utilities keep their hands in the generation market. They don't like the competition of homeowners making power and feeding it into the grid.
So how do we need to change the grid to facilitate local generation of electric power? Clearly the billing needs to change to reflect the reality of the cost of generation. My ToU billing has a 5x or 10x multiplier at peak times, but the hours are rather broad and the multiplier is rather high. One of the things I do is to adjust my thermostat ahead of the peak times so the energy for heating and cooling is pushed ahead of the peak time allowing it to be turned off through the peak hours.
If the billing more accurately reflected the actual timing and pricing of supplying that power I could have less ramp up and shorter shut down times and still saving my local utility a lot of money.
It's more likely that utility companies will motivate people with roof-top solar supplement it with a Tesla power-wall or something similar. Store your excess output, and use it up yourself, rather than selling it to the utility company.
This isn't going to help the utility companies, who would become suppliers of last resort, with a much more erratic demand to satisfy.
It would make a lot more sense for the utility companies to pay individual consumers for the right exploit that distributed storage when they needed to, but Rick hasn't been all that enthusiastic about that idea when the battery is in a parked - and notionally charging - electric car.
I agree 100% that utilities will ultimately be involved in scheduling the charging of EVs. That's a win/win for everyone. It's the idea that the batteries in EVs will ever be used to power the grid that is silly for the many reasons I've explained. Since we've had that conversation you yourself have explained how specialized batteries with specific properties for grid storage will be used for that at lower costs than the relatively expensive batteries in EVs which very few will be willing to wear out due to the high cost of replacement. (an idea you derided when I originally suggested it)
But managing the charging schedule to optimally utilize excess capacity in the grid will almost certainly become important to utilities as EVs become dominant. I think utilities will start to make noises by 2025 if not sooner. They will be working on legislation to give them more direct control over home EV charging. From what I've heard the current plans for rate optimization are not very user friendly and actually require a second monthly fee for having the capability. I think that is a bad plan for most consumers, but it may end up being shoved down their throats since the voters seldom have as much leverage as lobbyists.
Your "explanations" come down to the fact that you don't like the idea.
Vanadium flow batteries have been touted as better option for grid storage, but they aren't yet being made in volume, and they'd have to be a lot better to beat out the economies of scale we are already getting on batteries made for the electric car market.
I'm sure that the utilities will eventually be able to negotiate control over home charging, but they will have to pay enough to get the people who own the batteries to agree. There are pretty basic legal barriers against them trying force anything down their customer's throats.
This is pure Bill. When he can find nothing else to argue, he resorts to ad hominem.
EVs are nowhere near popular enough to supply a useful amount of storage for the grid as a whole. Then there is the one small detail that they are not designed for the task... making any such scheme impractical. So the entire scheme requires the EV industries to shift gears they generally don't have and don't have an interest in being involved with considering the impact to warranties, etc.
It would be possible for the utilities to "pay enough", but as has been clearly explained to you many times, the economics just aren't there. The cost to a auto owner will be higher than the cost for a utility to buy their own batteries and not have to be concerned about the cars being available or not. Since it's not even possible to do until the auto makers get on board and design EVs to supply power (other than through their 12V power ports) the idea is a non-starter.
Now that we've finished with that digression, how will the electric supply grid need to change for EVs?
Nobody has ever said that. I first came across the idea in
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which was published in 2008. Electric cars are a necessary part of getting our CO2 emissions down, and they have to get a lot more popular than they are now.
That does involve increasing generating capacity by 30%, from renewable sources, many of which aren't dispatchable. The car's batteries are widely seen as potentially helpful (if not by you).
Didn't seem to worry Elon Musk when he sold 128 kWh of his car batteries to South Australia to be used for grid storage.
Tell that to Elon Musk.
The explanations have been numerous, but entirely unconvincing.
Right. You are the expert? Pity about all the other experts who do like the idea.
You are convinced that only you have expert knowledge in the area, so we will wait for you to enlighten us.
That is the point. You say the vanadium batteries are not made in large enough quantities yet, the same point applies to EVs and EVs still can't be used for grid storage because they aren't designed to do that.
And not by you if you pay attention to your own points you make.
I never saw any pictures of cars, just grey boxes. EVs do not have the electronics and there is no plan to add it. Why? Because no one is currently making serious proposals to do this. It is just an idea that could technically be done, but it's not economically feasible. It will never be able to compete with Vanadium grid storage batteries.
By you. Anyone else can see the poor logic in assuming a car company will have an interest in designing their EVs to not just charge, but to supply power to the grid. It ain't happening any time soon and in not too much time vanadium batteries will be doing this job, if for no other reason because they can supply many MWh at a much lower cost. Car batteries have limited MWh/MW ratios that make large storage less practical.
"ALL" the other experts? LOL It doesn't matter how many "experts" you find, until the auto makers produce cars with this capability the potential is zero.
We've already discussed EV batteries ad nausea. Do you have no opinions on how EVs will be changing the grid?
On Friday, 14 May 2021 at 08:30:43 UTC-7, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: ...
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I beg to differ (again, we had this discussion a while ago).
It seems that Some Tesla cars DO now support the capability of bidirectional charging (ie v2G). And a quote in the article states that Tesla may get into the business at some undefined time.
Actually, the additional circuitry to the car is pretty simple, the basic design doesn't need to change much at all.
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When the price of electrical power is high enough there can be justification for allowing the vehicle battery to be used for grid storage. There were notable instances where astronomic prices were reached in Australia and even in California last year it reached $600/MWh.
Obviously, there need to be various agreements in place but for a sufficiently high price, it can be valuable both for the power generator and the vehicle owner.
For the power operator, it has the advantage that they don't need to do capital outlay for plant that is only going to be used in rare circumstances.
Tesla in particular already operates in the power business for it's Superchargers and has the required data connections to all its vehicles, it is in a prime position to be able to manage such a system.
The attached article does re-iterate your point that it will only become effective when there is a sizable base of electric vehicles, we probably haven't reached it yet but Tesla on its own has a million cars and growing at a few hundred thousand per year. At some point, it may appear.
The report on the Tesla cars is a teardown, not a discussion of a feature available on cars. While the electronics in the model 3 charger may allow for a possibility of vehicle to grid, there is no indication that Tesla has provided for this as a feature in any auto presently made. In particular, read Tesla's comments about this...
"At the same time, any discussion regarding the capabilities of EV related technologies must recognize as a first principle that customer experience and willingness for participation is key."
"In any setting, it is important to remember that EVs are modes of transportation first and foremost for customers."
So Tesla is not suggesting they will ever enable this sort of capability and seem to me to be saying it may or may not be desired by the customers. I know I'm not wearing out my battery to save a few bucks on my electric bill.
Vanadium batteries will be much cheaper in general and provide much more kWh per $ which is what grid storage is all about.
This has been discussed ad nausea. You talk about the utilities not wanting to outlay the bucks for storage that is rarely used, but storage is the opposite, used often! In fact it is well known that a portion of the capacity is used for arbitrage of electricity saving the cost of the storage over just a very few years.
As renewables and accompanying storage become dominant in our grids the time periods for the storage will expand from a couple of hours to days or even weeks. In those situations the available storage in autos will be trivial extending the capacity by very short amounts of time relatively. That is on top of the fact that during those days or weeks of energy generation shortages charging autos is one of the required uses for electrical power. Just like the gasoline pipeline shutdown, we need adequate grid storage to prevent EVs from being stranded, not to suck the energy out of them.
Yes, using the batteries in EVs for grid storage sounds like a good idea, but even if it ends up being implemented, it will never amount to much. Rather it will be too little, too late AND just plain a bad idea.
On Friday, 14 May 2021 at 17:04:39 UTC-7, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: ...
I probably wouldn't either.
That still requires large-scale investment.
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You may be perfectly correct but you can't use arguments such as "EVs do not have the electronics and there is no plan to add it." to defend your position as there is evidence it is untrue.
Nissan, Hyundai and Toyota either already have or are developing support in their vehicles. Some standards for communication are in place with refinements being added. Many corporations that are developing electric vehicle fleets are expecting to participate.
I suspect for the foreseeable future EV makers won't support this capability as it will impact their warranty.
Yes, but utilities are literally all about large scale investment. With the cost of renewables dropping below most other energy sources the only thing holding it back is grid storage to facilitate availability. As those prices come down it will not only be useful, it will be the dominant form of energy, renewable with storage.
Sorry, I don't agree. I think the report is overstated. The fact that someone in Tesla looked at the matter some years ago and according to a third party teardown a portion of a charger unit does not preclude generating power from the battery does not equal "the electronics supports vehicle to grid". There is literally no evidence from Tesla that there is intent to provide this capability or that it is even supported in the car as a future software upgrade.
Why are there no reports of this? Don't confuse intelligent control by the utilities of charging times with two way charging by utilities. I still think a big issue is acceptance by both the auto owners and the warranty providers. Would you warranty a battery for X miles if the owner can make money from renting his battery out on a daily basis?
Then no one addresses what happens in the extreme cases. You postulated this would be useful in extreme, infrequent cases, such as some disaster taking down a portion of the grid for days. That's a perfect time to withdraw kWhs from EVs to keep local grids up. But the auto owners are going to disconnect so they can keep the juice in their cars to be able to use them as... CARS! That was Tesla's mention of cars primary use as cars. The utility won't be pleased by this.
Indeed we will. But given the lack of appropriate benefit to the auto owner and the total lack of reward to the auto maker and the lack of need by the utility, I think it is a foregone conclusion that autos will only be charged on one way streets.
Presently the utilities have generation capacity that is only used intermittently, not even every day! What is special about energy storage that would be used the same way? Why does the infrequency of need mean they can't afford to build their own generation but need to rent car batteries?
Apples and pears. Scaling up vanadium battery production is a complicated problem - we don't know enough about the finer details of the chemistry, it is going to take time.. Adding the adding the additional controls and communications to a car battery to let it talk to the utility company isn't. We've got all the tools we need to handle the task.
A bizarre assertion. You misunderstand what I post by looking at it from your own blinkered point of view. All I'm doing is repeating expert opinion which has been around since 2008, and you want to insist that your opinion is more expert, and the one I should be relying on.
South Australia didn't bother to wait for Vanadium flow cells to set up their 128 kWhr grid storage battery, and they didn't have any trouble putting the electronics together to make them work. Adding the internet links to make the control distributed isn't rocket science.
Their warranty will get re-written to cover a finite number of charging cycles, if it isn't already.
Until they are produced in volume, this won't be true, and the process of scaling up any large-scale production process isn't trivial, and it certainly isn't cheap or all that predictable.
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is now talking about vanadium bromine redox batteries, which ought to offer better performance and the prospect that they might take over the market may have killed the enthusiasm for investing in high volume production of the current generation. <snip>
That the first thing that everybody thinks about. Extreme cases are easy to imagine, and contingency plans always take them into account.
Car owners will have to agree to let the utilities run down their batteries to some extent - the extent will be negotiable. For a car owner to renege on the deal in the middle of an emergency would almost certainly expose them to massive penalties (which would be written into the contract).
The lack of appropriate benefit to the auto-owner exists only in your imagination. If the scheme is going to work, the auto-owner has consent, and the benefit must be big enough to buy that consent.
Intermittently used generating capacity represents money invested in plant that doesn't generate any income a lot of the time. Generating plants tend to be big - there are real economies of scale. Battery storage is much more scalable, and batteries in electric vehicles are owned by the vehicle owners - they don't have to paid for by the utility, and the utility doesn't have to pay invest of dividends on the capital invested.
It's a much more flexible solution. In the end the utilities are going to optimise their mix of quick start gas-fired generating capacity, their own pumped and a battery storage, and the battery storage they buy in from electric vehicle owners. What the optimum mix will end being isn't obvious, but it's a bit early to claim that electric vehicle batteries won't form part of the mix.
Once most people have electric cars the batteries in those cars which are parked will be able to deliver about four times the average grid output (if not for all that long) and it seems improbable that that won't form any part of the mix.
You seem to be ignorant of the facts. They are in the process right now of installing vanadium battery grid storage in various places at the MWh level. The main issue with vanadium is cost and as you are fond of saying, with increases in production the cost comes down and this is no exception. So over the next few years vanadium flow batteries will become the dominant grid storage solution with ever decreasing costs and pretty much no inherent limitations such as availability of materials as lithium batteries may encounter if a new grid storage market opens up. Remember, lithium is a bit on the scarce side in that for many sources it takes some four or five years to develop from scratch. EVs are already pushing the envelope on lithium production.
Using EV batteries on the other hand has zero installed base. No cars with the capability and no charging units with the capability. Neither are there explicitly indicated plans for making this happen. It's an option some car makers are keeping open, but not by including the feature in their EVs. Then there is the issue of limited capacity. Even if every EV sold in the US in 2021 had vehicle to grid capability that would provide back up for one day for everyone with the EVs... 1 million people. Not much of a backup for a nation with 330 million people without even considering all the power used outside of the home.
No, vehicle to grid would only have utility for a few years as a stop gap measure from now until good backup storage is developed, but it won't be nearly sufficient in time for that. The market will vanish by the time EVs might be capable of fulfilling it.
I'm not talking about who is expert. I'm just pointing out the facts ma'am. Experts often talk about what is possible without considering what is practical or what is actually useful or economical in a real world populated with people with emotions. Experts will tell us that the pandemic can be over in a few weeks by taking the right actions... but in the real world it ain't happening here.
Indeed! So how many cars were involved? Oh, none! No one has to commit to leaving their cars plugged in while the power shortage is happening and their batteries are being drained. No one has to worry about their warranty not covering the excess wear from frequent charge/discharge cycles. In particular no utility is saying, "I don't want to pay for those batteries, I want to use EV batteries!" Maybe because there aren't 300,000 Teslas in Austrailia to provide the 128 MWh storage?
I don't know why you want to keep rehashing this issue. Continuing to bring it up exposes more ways that it is not a solution to any problems.
I've posted this before, and it hasn't listed any new examples recently
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from August 2020suggests that one of leaders in the field now working on a slightly different technology. Developing new technology isn't entirely straight forward.
But the way the costs come down isn't all that predictable.
Perhaps.
Or what look like facts to you.
But it did happen in Taiwan, and almost a quickly in New Zealand, and Australia wasn't far behind. Lots of countries didn't do as well.
If Trump - and bunch of US state administrations - had actually listened to the experts on the medical science - the US might have done as well, but they concentrated on the short term damage effective lock-downs would have done to the economy, while ignoring the long term damage that the epidemic turned out to deliver. You seem to have the same kind of fixed ideas about what might be practical.
More alarmist irrelevance.
None that you are prepared to take seriously, any more than America was prepared to accept that lock-downs were a useful tool for slowing down Covid-19 early enough for them to do much good.
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