pretty OT: boats

But you do if you want to get away from the missus. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

eason"

because that is WHERE they are parked when not in use. How many boats do y ou see in driveways that ARE in use? Answer: NONE.

If you swanned around in water on a boat, you might see more boats being us ed.

This isn't altogether surprising. If you don't head towards areas where boa ts are used, you won't see many of them on the road hat you are taking.

OESN'T mean they are NEVER used. I have an aircraft that spends MOST of its time on the ground; this year, do to COVID, it only spent 125 hours actual ly in the air (out of about 6,000). But if you drive by my airport you will see it tied down, day after day.

John Larkin reminding us that he thinks that he does electronic design.

A stepped leader starts in the cloud and reaches towards the earth. When it gets close, a streamer reaches up from the earth. When it reaches the leader, a conductive path is formed that allows the discharge from the cloud to the ground. Here are some videos in slow motion:

Sprites, Jets, and Glowing Balls: The Science of Lightning

How does lightning work? Where does it come from? | Weather Wise S2E2

Lightning Strike at 103,000 FPS

- in Singapore

Lightning in Super Slow Motion

te:

ys, because that is WHERE they are parked when not in use.

rably serious proposal that batteries in parked electric cars could be used as back-storage for the power network, to help it cope with the non-dispat chable nature of wind- and solar-power.

st of using auto batteries are quite high given that they are in autos, dev ices that are expensive without the battery. While in theory a battery can be replaced in an auto, the cost of that will not make the marginal cost of using the battery for not transportation uses significantly less since the y are "captive" devices, only purchased from the automaker.

Car batteries wouldn't cost the power network anything if they didn't conne ct to them. They don't do anything for the car owner when they aren't being used. Renting them out to the power network when they aren't being used w ould make some money for the car owner, and would save the power network fr om having to buy their own storage. Since a certain number of cars get wipe d off in car accidents, it may pay the car owner to let the power network u se the battery in the car before it gets damaged in a car accident, and get extra value out of it that way.

batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batteries will make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the utilities owni ng the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

The car owners have to own the batteries anyway. The question is whether th e power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from the extra u se. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

h depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen marginal ra tes exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be some time off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for wholly ow ned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designed to do ju st that.

If we all drove electric cars, the power network would need to be 30% bigg er to cover the power they consumed. This power is going to be consumed by the 5% of cars that are on the road at any one time. The power that the oth er 95% could feed back into the net is thus about six times the peak capaci ty of the net. It seems nuts to have the power network invest in providing that capacity separately.

Vanadium flow batteries seem likely to do a better job of grid storage than the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous South Australi an battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla car batterie s - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteries aren't

- yet.

ries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a price higher than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many market, the re has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with the key wor d being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the utilities to simply own the capacity themselves.

If the car battery isn't being used, it isn't doing anything for you. If yo u can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, that's a win.

sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I dispute th e willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive part of the car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better off putting in their own pockets.

Batteries are replaceable, and the wear would be paid for.

t DOESN'T mean they are NEVER used. I have an aircraft that spends MOST of its time on the ground; this year, do to COVID, it only spent 125 hours act ually in the air (out of about 6,000). But if you drive by my airport you w ill see it tied down, day after day.

, owning an airplane which gets relatively little use. Otherwise he would h ave a hard time seeing this, much like Larkin.

e driveway here.

I'm neutral. My inner suburb of Sydney is largely boat free. I can see one sail-boat and one speed-boat out on Sydney Harbour from our balcony, and th ey make the view marginally more interesting. Occasionally we see sailing dinghies racing on the other side of the harbour, but they are bit far away for their antics to make much sense.

rote:

ways, because that is WHERE they are parked when not in use.

lerably serious proposal that batteries in parked electric cars could be us ed as back-storage for the power network, to help it cope with the non-disp atchable nature of wind- and solar-power.

in

cost of using auto batteries are quite high given that they are in autos, d evices that are expensive without the battery. While in theory a battery ca n be replaced in an auto, the cost of that will not make the marginal cost of using the battery for not transportation uses significantly less since t hey are "captive" devices, only purchased from the automaker.

nect to them. They don't do anything for the car owner when they aren't bei ng used. Renting them out to the power network when they aren't being used would make some money for the car owner, and would save the power network from having to buy their own storage. Since a certain number of cars get wi ped off in car accidents, it may pay the car owner to let the power network use the battery in the car before it gets damaged in a car accident, and g et extra value out of it that way.

You continue to make the same fallacious claims showing you fail to underst and the material issues.

Car batteries cost a premium because they part of a car and the car dealers have no incentive to sell replacements at a good price... captive market.

The car owner will be very concerned about this potential huge cost and wan t to see serious compensation.

Batteries are consumables. While they may presently be treated as capital that depreciates, anyone building an installation will realize that they we ar with use like other consumables. So it will be less expensive for the u tilities to simply buy their own batteries than to pay the inflated prices for the use of auto batteries.

Then on top of it all, as you have pointed out, there are other technologie s that will likely serve the power utility industry at a better cost struct ure than auto batteries. So this market is unlikely to develop very much b efore it becomes obsolete.

Then there is the issue of looming battery shortage as EVs take off. Every lithium based battery on the market will end up costing a premium because of shortages of a few key raw materials. This will favor other technologie s for the applications that can tolerate them (size, weight) while auto use can't. This will further accent the cost disadvantage of "idle" uses of a uto batteries.

ir batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batteries wi ll make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the utilities ow ning the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

the power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from the extra use. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

As I have explained to you there is a fundamental price difference simply b ecause the batteries are in cars where the replacement batteries will not b e priced competitively. I know I'm not going to stress my battery in any w ay I can avoid.

ich depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen marginal rates exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be some tim e off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for wholly owned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designed to do just that.

gger to cover the power they consumed. This power is going to be consumed b y the 5% of cars that are on the road at any one time. The power that the o ther 95% could feed back into the net is thus about six times the peak capa city of the net. It seems nuts to have the power network invest in providin g that capacity separately.

I can't believe you are touting that nonsense. Car charging mostly will be done off peak so that it simply uses excess capacity lying fallow. The re sulting higher utilization of the existing grid may well result in overall lower electricity prices.

Your numbers are nonsense, made up from thin air. The discharge rate of au to batteries is much higher than the rate they can feed the power line unle ss expensive equipment is installed... very expensive equipment. Homes are only wired for a total of about 50 kW. Anything above that will require m ajor infrastructure changes in addition to the charge/discharge equipment. What you are talking about would be like having a Tesla supercharger in ev ery home. Ain't gonna happen.

an the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous South Austra lian battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla car batter ies - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteries aren' t - yet.

Yup, and they are still there working with very little accompaniment becaus e of the expense. Currently it is only cost effective for the peak time ar bitrage and the very few moments when they are needed to prevent black outs and brownouts. The costs need to come down considerably for them to be wi de spread. Batteries in autos will remain the most expensive form of batte ry power available.

teries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a price highe r than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many market, t here has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with the key w ord being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the utilities to simply own the capacity themselves.

you can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, that's a win.

You keep talking about the battery sitting fallow. The WHOLE CAR is sittin g fallow and people are very happy with that because they don't want the ca rs worn out.

or sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I dispute the willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive part of t he car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better off putti ng in their own pockets.

Only if the amount pays for the higher replacement cost of auto batteries. Price a new engine for your car and tell me if it would be worth wearing i t out to power a generator? It would be the most expensive generator power source you can imagine. Same with the overpriced auto batteries.

E.

hat DOESN'T mean they are NEVER used. I have an aircraft that spends MOST o f its time on the ground; this year, do to COVID, it only spent 125 hours a ctually in the air (out of about 6,000). But if you drive by my airport you will see it tied down, day after day.

on, owning an airplane which gets relatively little use. Otherwise he would have a hard time seeing this, much like Larkin.

the driveway here.

e sail-boat and one speed-boat out on Sydney Harbour from our balcony, and they make the view marginally more interesting. Occasionally we see sailin g dinghies racing on the other side of the harbour, but they are bit far aw ay for their antics to make much sense.

Sail boats are sea going for the most part. If you aren't near the coast y ou won't often find enough wind to sail. Here there are a handful of days when there is enough wind to move a small sail boat and those are mostly wh en it is cold. It's about 200 miles to the Atlantic but only 100 miles to the Chesapeake Bay. It would be better if we were on the bay.

ts

ed

veways, because that is WHERE they are parked when not in use.

tolerably serious proposal that batteries in parked electric cars could be used as back-storage for the power network, to help it cope with the non-di spatchable nature of wind- and solar-power.

l cost of using auto batteries are quite high given that they are in autos, devices that are expensive without the battery. While in theory a battery can be replaced in an auto, the cost of that will not make the marginal cos t of using the battery for not transportation uses significantly less since they are "captive" devices, only purchased from the automaker.

onnect to them. They don't do anything for the car owner when they aren't b eing used. Renting them out to the power network when they aren't being use d would make some money for the car owner, and would save the power network from having to buy their own storage. Since a certain number of cars get w iped off in car accidents, it may pay the car owner to let the power networ k use the battery in the car before it gets damaged in a car accident, and get extra value out of it that way.

stand the material issues.

But you can't be bothered to say which claim is fallacious, or why.

rs have no incentive to sell replacements at a good price... captive market .

They may be "part of the car" but it's going to be difficult to make them d ifferent enough that the same battery isn't going to be used in a range of different cars.

ant to see serious compensation.

If there is a "potential huge cost".

that depreciates, anyone building an installation will realize that they w ear with use like other consumables. So it will be less expensive for the u tilities to simply buy their own batteries than to pay the inflated prices for the use of auto batteries.

If they have to pay an inflated price. You seem to be a bit neurotic about the issue, and would probably demand an inflated price. Less annxious car o wners might be less rapacious.

ies that will likely serve the power utility industry at a better cost stru cture than auto batteries. So this market is unlikely to develop very much before it becomes obsolete.

Batteries haven't developed much in the past century or so. Vanadium flow b atteries do seem to be better suited to the job, but the advantages aren't huge, and seem to be wiped out by the economies of scale vis a vis car batt eries at the moment.

y lithium based battery on the market will end up costing a premium because of shortages of a few key raw materials.

Raw materials get found when you look harder for them. People are still fin ding new oil fields. Today's paper had a puff for rare earth mineral mines in Australia - the ores are there, but as long as China manipulated the mar ket to bankrupt anybody who tried to compete, they didn't get exploited. Pa int China as a strategic threat and the mine owners can get subsidised ..

them (size, weight) while auto use can't. This will further accent the cost disadvantage of "idle" uses of auto batteries.

But won't wipe out the fact that can batteries aren't do anything useful wh en the car is parked.

heir batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batteries will make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the utilities owning the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

r the power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from the ext ra use. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

because the batteries are in cars where the replacement batteries will not be priced competitively. I know I'm not going to stress my battery in any way I can avoid.

The assumption that the car batteries won't be priced competitively is just an assumption. It's a very modular function, and trying to push the price up by making the modules less interchangable is going to run into a lot of resistance.

which depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen margina l rates exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be some t ime off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for wholl y owned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designed to d o just that.

igger to cover the power they consumed. This power is going to be consumed by the 5% of cars that are on the road at any one time. The power that the other 95% could feed back into the net is thus about six times the peak cap acity of the net. It seems nuts to have the power network invest in providi ng that capacity separately.

e done off peak so that it simply uses excess capacity lying fallow. The re sulting higher utilization of the existing grid may well result in overall lower electricity prices.

If the energy is mostly coming from renewable sources, charging will mostly be done when the power is available. "Off-peak" refers back to the days wh en most of the power came from fixed capacity generating plants which weren 't fully loaded at "off-peak" times.

uto batteries is much higher than the rate they can feed the power line unl ess expensive equipment is installed... very expensive equipment.

But the fact that cars are parked for 95% of the time means that there will be a lot of them connected to the grid. They can be charged a lot faster t han they are discharged while being driven, but that does take expensive eq uipment. Home chargers, or trickle charging sockets in parking garages will be able to cope with just as much current discharging as they will when c harging, and the current can be spread over a lot of cars.

You are being foolishly alarmist.

require major infrastructure changes in addition to the charge/discharge eq uipment. What you are talking about would be like having a Tesla supercharg er in every home.

No, it isn't. This is a ridiculous misconception.

Of course not. And there's absolutely no reason why it might need to happen .

than the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous South Aust ralian battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla car batt eries - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteries are n't - yet.

use of the expense. Currently it is only cost effective for the peak time a rbitrage and the very few moments when they are needed to prevent black out s and brownouts. The costs need to come down considerably for them to be wi de spread. Batteries in autos will remain the most expensive form of batter y power available.

About half the capacity of the Tesla battery bank in South Australia is tie d up in very short term phase management of the grid. It has replaced a lot of more old-fashioned gear designed tp do the same job, and is making a lo t more money out of it than it does from buying excess power when it is ch eap and selling it back when it worth more. That's still worth doing and mo re batteries have been bought to do more of the same work - about half as m uch again so far. There's room for pumped hydro storage on South Australia

- at least one of them to pump sea-water.

and there seems to be 1 Gwatt of it in the pipe-line.

atteries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a price hig her than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many market, there has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with the key word being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the utilitie s to simply own the capacity themselves.

f you can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, that' s a win.

ng fallow and people are very happy with that because they don't want the c ars worn out.

Batteries are easy to replace.

for sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I disput e the willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive part of the car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better off put ting in their own pockets.

. Price a new engine for your car and tell me if it would be worth wearing it out to power a generator?

Car engines aren't all that modular. The engine has to fit into the body of your car. Batteries are a whole lot more more flexible.

me with the overpriced auto batteries.

The lead-acid batteries that go into regular cars are lot easier to replace than the engine, and a lot more interchangeable. There's a very competitiv e market for them.

ONE.

That DOESN'T mean they are NEVER used. I have an aircraft that spends MOST of its time on the ground; this year, do to COVID, it only spent 125 hours actually in the air (out of about 6,000). But if you drive by my airport y ou will see it tied down, day after day.

n on, owning an airplane which gets relatively little use. Otherwise he wou ld have a hard time seeing this, much like Larkin.

f the driveway here.

one sail-boat and one speed-boat out on Sydney Harbour from our balcony, an d they make the view marginally more interesting. Occasionally we see saili ng dinghies racing on the other side of the harbour, but they are bit far a way for their antics to make much sense.

you won't often find enough wind to sail. Here there are a handful of days when there is enough wind to move a small sail boat and those are mostly wh en it is cold. It's about 200 miles to the Atlantic but only 100 miles to t he Chesapeake Bay. It would be better if we were on the bay.

I grew up on the north west coast of Tasmania. Small boat sailing wasn't po pular, because strong winds could blow up dangerously rapidly.

My younger brother planned to sail back from England at one point, but he a nd his friends didn't get away as early as the should have, and nearly drow ned in an autumn gale off Plymouth - they got towed back to safety by a pas sing French trawler, and gave up on the idea.

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riveways, because that is WHERE they are parked when not in use.

a tolerably serious proposal that batteries in parked electric cars could b e used as back-storage for the power network, to help it cope with the non- dispatchable nature of wind- and solar-power.

nal cost of using auto batteries are quite high given that they are in auto s, devices that are expensive without the battery. While in theory a batter y can be replaced in an auto, the cost of that will not make the marginal c ost of using the battery for not transportation uses significantly less sin ce they are "captive" devices, only purchased from the automaker.

connect to them. They don't do anything for the car owner when they aren't being used. Renting them out to the power network when they aren't being u sed would make some money for the car owner, and would save the power netwo rk from having to buy their own storage. Since a certain number of cars get wiped off in car accidents, it may pay the car owner to let the power netw ork use the battery in the car before it gets damaged in a car accident, an d get extra value out of it that way.

erstand the material issues.

I have explained several times so far. If you can't figure that out, it's on you.

lers have no incentive to sell replacements at a good price... captive mark et.

different enough that the same battery isn't going to be used in a range o f different cars.

Not sure what you are trying to say. Every car maker with have totally dif ferent battery modules, the replaceable unit. They will have no incentive to offer good prices and will charge a heavy premium to anyone silly enough to wear out their battery. Then on top of that, there is no way to extrac t the power from the battery. For an auto maker to support that, there nee ds to be something in it for them other than increased manufacturing costs and warranty claims.

want to see serious compensation.

What part on a car is not very overpriced compared to something you buy sep arate. That's why after market parts are a large industry. But it won't h appen for batteries because they are so expensive and a huge share of the a uto cost.

al that depreciates, anyone building an installation will realize that they wear with use like other consumables. So it will be less expensive for the utilities to simply buy their own batteries than to pay the inflated price s for the use of auto batteries.

t the issue, and would probably demand an inflated price. Less annxious car owners might be less rapacious.

My neuroses aside, anyone will be very concerned once they understand the b attery is a consumable. They will look into the replacement cost and see j ust how expensive it will be. Once they understand that the utility will h ave to pay those costs and then pay a profit on top. Clearly this is more expensive than just owning the batteries unless it is a matter of some frac tion of a percent of the time they are needed. So yes, there could be a ti ny share of the market where this would work, but considering the obstacles in initiating such a program (mostly auto manufacturer participation and t he large expense of bi-directional power transfer device) it won't get off the ground.

ogies that will likely serve the power utility industry at a better cost st ructure than auto batteries. So this market is unlikely to develop very muc h before it becomes obsolete.

batteries do seem to be better suited to the job, but the advantages aren' t huge, and seem to be wiped out by the economies of scale vis a vis car ba tteries at the moment.

Of course they have. Lithium ion batteries did not exist in practical form until about 20 years ago. Any new technology will have to fight the econo mies of scale. Doesn't mean it won't happen. Even within Li-ion batteries there are different formulations optimized for different features. Heck, there is a company using repurposed lead-acid batteries removed from high r eliability service to power backup systems for commercial facilities.

There are many other options than trying to redirect autos into becoming ba ckup batteries.

ery lithium based battery on the market will end up costing a premium becau se of shortages of a few key raw materials.

inding new oil fields. Today's paper had a puff for rare earth mineral mine s in Australia - the ores are there, but as long as China manipulated the m arket to bankrupt anybody who tried to compete, they didn't get exploited. Paint China as a strategic threat and the mine owners can get subsidised ..

The fact that they can be new sources of minerals doesn't mean they won't b e in short supply as the demand ramps up exponentially. Tesla is projectin g 50% growth each year for the next decade. That's a lot of batteries.

Rare earth minerals are not really comparable because they aren't remotely rare, rather they are abundant. The US has huge supplies as do many source s.

China has done their damage by lowering prices and driving others out of th e market. Now they are looking for the return with higher prices. If othe rs restart production China won't repeat the low price and unlimited supply gimmick because their resources are finite and they need to conserve them.

e them (size, weight) while auto use can't. This will further accent the co st disadvantage of "idle" uses of auto batteries.

when the car is parked.

Which is an irrelevant fact.

their batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batterie s will make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the utilitie s owning the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

her the power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from the e xtra use. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

ly because the batteries are in cars where the replacement batteries will n ot be priced competitively. I know I'm not going to stress my battery in an y way I can avoid.

st an assumption. It's a very modular function, and trying to push the pric e up by making the modules less interchangable is going to run into a lot o f resistance.

It's not an assumption, it's an observation. The battery in my car is $22,

t which depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen margi nal rates exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be some time off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for who lly owned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designed to do just that.

bigger to cover the power they consumed. This power is going to be consume d by the 5% of cars that are on the road at any one time. The power that th e other 95% could feed back into the net is thus about six times the peak c apacity of the net. It seems nuts to have the power network invest in provi ding that capacity separately.

be done off peak so that it simply uses excess capacity lying fallow. The resulting higher utilization of the existing grid may well result in overal l lower electricity prices.

ly be done when the power is available. "Off-peak" refers back to the days when most of the power came from fixed capacity generating plants which wer en't fully loaded at "off-peak" times.

The reason charging from renewable resources is needed is because the suppl y is not matched to the demand, not enough at peak usage times, too much of f peak. Cars can charge at off peak demand times when excess supply is ava ilable without any increase in the grid capacity. You can't say cars need to charge when there is a generation surplus and also claim the power netwo rk has to be expanded to accommodate EV charging.

auto batteries is much higher than the rate they can feed the power line u nless expensive equipment is installed... very expensive equipment.

ll be a lot of them connected to the grid. They can be charged a lot faster than they are discharged while being driven, but that does take expensive equipment. Home chargers, or trickle charging sockets in parking garages wi ll be able to cope with just as much current discharging as they will when charging, and the current can be spread over a lot of cars.

Except that neither the cars nor the charging equipment support the reverse flow and neither are likely to do so in the future. You post made up numb ers that you can't support. Then claim the network has to grow to accommod ate EV charging.

The charging rate at Tesla superchargers is limited by the battery. Even t hat causes higher rate of wear and should be limited to required use. That brings us back to the issues of wearing out a very expensive battery.

No alarms, just facts. It is ignoring the facts that is foolish.

l require major infrastructure changes in addition to the charge/discharge equipment. What you are talking about would be like having a Tesla supercha rger in every home.

Actually, I have talked previously how the one impact to electric distribut ion may be that as homes add charging equipment it may present a higher tha n typical load to the local distribution network. If every other home in a neighborhood adds kW of charging equipment running continuously at the sam e time (such as at night) it can present the local distribution network wit h heavier than anticipated loads and require upgrades.

en.

I agree. There is no need for powering the grid from EVs.

e than the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous South Au stralian battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla car ba tteries - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteries a ren't - yet.

cause of the expense. Currently it is only cost effective for the peak time arbitrage and the very few moments when they are needed to prevent black o uts and brownouts. The costs need to come down considerably for them to be wide spread. Batteries in autos will remain the most expensive form of batt ery power available.

ied up in very short term phase management of the grid. It has replaced a l ot of more old-fashioned gear designed tp do the same job, and is making a lot more money out of it than it does from buying excess power when it is cheap and selling it back when it worth more. That's still worth doing and more batteries have been bought to do more of the same work - about half as much again so far. There's room for pumped hydro storage on South Australi a - at least one of them to pump sea-water.

batteries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a price h igher than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many marke t, there has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with the k ey word being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the utilit ies to simply own the capacity themselves.

If you can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, tha t's a win.

ting fallow and people are very happy with that because they don't want the cars worn out.

Not sure about "easy", but "cheap", absolutely not!

is for sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I disp ute the willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive part of the car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better off p utting in their own pockets.

es. Price a new engine for your car and tell me if it would be worth wearin g it out to power a generator?

of your car. Batteries are a whole lot more more flexible.

Lol!!! Engines are so modular they are often used in many models of cars a nd even sold to other makers. Batteries can also be modular, but there is nothing about that which makes them cheap. If you have a Leaf, you are goi ng to buy the replacement battery from Nissan, not Tesla and not from a thi rd party.

Same with the overpriced auto batteries.

ce than the engine, and a lot more interchangeable. There's a very competit ive market for them.

Yup, because they are not an integrated part of the car like a propulsion b attery. There is zero market for third party batteries presently and there is none anticipated.

NONE.

s. That DOESN'T mean they are NEVER used. I have an aircraft that spends MO ST of its time on the ground; this year, do to COVID, it only spent 125 hou rs actually in the air (out of about 6,000). But if you drive by my airport you will see it tied down, day after day.

ion on, owning an airplane which gets relatively little use. Otherwise he w ould have a hard time seeing this, much like Larkin.

of the driveway here.

e one sail-boat and one speed-boat out on Sydney Harbour from our balcony, and they make the view marginally more interesting. Occasionally we see sai ling dinghies racing on the other side of the harbour, but they are bit far away for their antics to make much sense.

t you won't often find enough wind to sail. Here there are a handful of day s when there is enough wind to move a small sail boat and those are mostly when it is cold. It's about 200 miles to the Atlantic but only 100 miles to the Chesapeake Bay. It would be better if we were on the bay.

popular, because strong winds could blow up dangerously rapidly.

and his friends didn't get away as early as the should have, and nearly dr owned in an autumn gale off Plymouth - they got towed back to safety by a p assing French trawler, and gave up on the idea.

e:

rote:

te:

nderstand the material issues.

on you.

You have pointed out that you don't like the claims. That doesn't make them fallacious.

ealers have no incentive to sell replacements at a good price... captive ma rket.

em different enough that the same battery isn't going to be used in a range of different cars.

fferent battery modules, the replaceable unit. They will have no incentive to offer good prices and will charge a heavy premium to anyone silly enough to wear out their battery. Then on top of that, there is no way to extract the power from the battery. For an auto maker to support that, there needs to be something in it for them other than increased manufacturing costs an d warranty claims.

Every car could have totally different battery modules. That doesn't mean t hat they have to. With internal combustion engines - which are much more di fficult to connect to the drive train - some manufacturers share engines.

Customers aren't going to be happy to get stuck with a bizarre, single-sour ced battery module, so this is an approach which has an obvious down-side.

nd want to see serious compensation.

Anybody silly enough to own a car designed to let them get ripped off whene ver they need a new battery pack probably wouldn't be to concerned.

eparate.

The lead-acid battery?

r batteries because they are so expensive and a huge share of the auto cost .

Only if the customers are spectacularly gullible, and if the regulators hav e been thoroughly captured. If the power network has an interest in cars ha ving easily replaceable and interchangable batteries, they may end up lobby ing for legislation to make thus compulsory.

ital that depreciates, anyone building an installation will realize that th ey wear with use like other consumables. So it will be less expensive for t he utilities to simply buy their own batteries than to pay the inflated pri ces for the use of auto batteries.

out the issue, and would probably demand an inflated price. Less anxious ca r owners might be less rapacious.

battery is a consumable. They will look into the replacement cost and see just how expensive it will be. Once they understand that the utility will h ave to pay those costs and then pay a profit on top. Clearly this is more e xpensive than just owning the batteries unless it is a matter of some fract ion of a percent of the time they are needed. So yes, there could be a tiny share of the market where this would work, but considering the obstacles i n initiating such a program (mostly auto manufacturer participation and the large expense of bi-directional power transfer device) it won't get off th e ground.

Why do bidirectional power transfer devices have to be expensive? The dome stic solar power market in Australia has taken to buying a battery to stick on the wall as well as the solar panels to go on the roof. The bidirection al power transfer devices that take power from the roof and puts it into th e battery when the sun is shining, and feeds it out from the battery into t he house clearly aren't prohibitively expensive.

ologies that will likely serve the power utility industry at a better cost structure than auto batteries. So this market is unlikely to develop very m uch before it becomes obsolete.

ow batteries do seem to be better suited to the job, but the advantages are n't huge, and seem to be wiped out by the economies of scale vis a vis car batteries at the moment.

m until about 20 years ago. Any new technology will have to fight the econo mies of scale. Doesn't mean it won't happen. Even within Li-ion batteries t here are different formulations optimized for different features. Heck, the re is a company using repurposed lead-acid batteries removed from high reli ability service to power backup systems for commercial facilities.

backup batteries.

True. But having a pile of batteries in parked cars that could potentially deliver six times as much power as the grid for a few hours makes them an i nteresting resource, and one that the grid wouldn't have to tie up much cap ital to exploit.

Every lithium based battery on the market will end up costing a premium bec ause of shortages of a few key raw materials.

finding new oil fields. Today's paper had a puff for rare earth mineral mi nes in Australia - the ores are there, but as long as China manipulated the market to bankrupt anybody who tried to compete, they didn't get exploited . Paint China as a strategic threat and the mine owners can get subsidised .

be in short supply as the demand ramps up exponentially. Tesla is projecti ng 50% growth each year for the next decade. That's a lot of batteries.

And if people take Elon Musk's extrapolations seriously, they will dig the mines to supply the market.

y rare, rather they are abundant. The US has huge supplies as do many sourc es.

the market. Now they are looking for the return with higher prices. If othe rs restart production China won't repeat the low price and unlimited supply gimmick because their resources are finite and they need to conserve them.

ate them (size, weight) while auto use can't. This will further accent the cost disadvantage of "idle" uses of auto batteries.

l when the car is parked.

er their batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batter ies will make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the utilit ies owning the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

ether the power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from the extra use. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

mply because the batteries are in cars where the replacement batteries will not be priced competitively. I know I'm not going to stress my battery in any way I can avoid.

just an assumption. It's a very modular function, and trying to push the pr ice up by making the modules less interchangable is going to run into a lot of resistance.

,000. Do the math and you will find that's very expensive compared to the u tility having their own batteries.

ket which depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen mar ginal rates exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be so me time off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for w holly owned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designed to do just that.

ll be done off peak so that it simply uses excess capacity lying fallow. Th e resulting higher utilization of the existing grid may well result in over all lower electricity prices.

stly be done when the power is available. "Off-peak" refers back to the day s when most of the power came from fixed capacity generating plants which w eren't fully loaded at "off-peak" times.

ply is not matched to the demand, not enough at peak usage times, too much off peak. Cars can charge at off peak demand times when excess supply is av ailable without any increase in the grid capacity. You can't say cars need to charge when there is a generation surplus and also claim the power netwo rk has to be expanded to accommodate EV charging.

Of course you can. The power network is already complaining that renewable power is being generated in the wrong locations for the current grid to mo ve it to where it is being consumed. Change the location and timing of powe r consumption and the power transfer network is always having to have to be changed. Or the people who own the power network will tell you this, and c harge you extra for wanting something different..

of auto batteries is much higher than the rate they can feed the power line unless expensive equipment is installed... very expensive equipment.

will be a lot of them connected to the grid. They can be charged a lot fast er than they are discharged while being driven, but that does take expensiv e equipment. Home chargers, or trickle charging sockets in parking garages will be able to cope with just as much current discharging as they will whe n charging, and the current can be spread over a lot of cars.

se flow and neither are likely to do so in the future.

They may not be able to do so at the moment. The gear in the car supports c harging the battery when the car is parked, and discharging it (to turn the wheels) when the car is in motion. Tesla didn't have any trouble turning car batteries into grid storage in South Australia's 128 MW grid storage un it, so it isn't difficult, expensive or technically demanding.

as to grow to accommodate EV charging.

All the numbers I've been posting are the ones I can remember from the last time we had this debate, when I did dig out links to support them. They ar en't remotely controversial.

that causes higher rate of wear and should be limited to required use. That brings us back to the issues of wearing out a very expensive battery.

The argument is about cars parked for most of the day, and attached to char gers that can take hours to charge them back up to capacity. The Telsa supe r-charger is designed to serve people who need their cars recharged in the middle of a trip, not at either end of a daily commute.

And you do seem remarkably willing to ignore facts that don't suit your arg ument.

ill require major infrastructure changes in addition to the charge/discharg e equipment. What you are talking about would be like having a Tesla superc harger in every home.

ution may be that as homes add charging equipment it may present a higher t han typical load to the local distribution network. If every other home in a neighborhood adds kW of charging equipment running continuously at the sa me time (such as at night) it can present the local distribution network wi th heavier than anticipated loads and require upgrades.

Peak load used to be when people were cooking dinner. Now it is during hot days when the air-conditioning is running flat out.

Trickle charging a car battery over six to eight hours isn't going to be a problem. The power grid has dealt with people building more houses, and put ting in electric powered devices - most recently air conditioners - for it' s whole existence. They will be able to cope.

ppen.

There's no need but it might be a cheap and convenient form of sort term st orage.

age than the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous South Australian battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla car batteries - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteries aren't - yet.

because of the expense. Currently it is only cost effective for the peak ti me arbitrage and the very few moments when they are needed to prevent black outs and brownouts. The costs need to come down considerably for them to b e wide spread. Batteries in autos will remain the most expensive form of ba ttery power available.

tied up in very short term phase management of the grid. It has replaced a lot of more old-fashioned gear designed tp do the same job, and is making a lot more money out of it than it does from buying excess power when it is cheap and selling it back when it worth more. That's still worth doing and more batteries have been bought to do more of the same work - about half a s much again so far. There's room for pumped hydro storage on South Austral ia - at least one of them to pump sea-water.

to batteries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a price higher than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many mar ket, there has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with the key word being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the util ities to simply own the capacity themselves.

u. If you can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, t hat's a win.

itting fallow and people are very happy with that because they don't want t he cars worn out.

You seem to think that electric car manufacturers will be able to get away with making replacement batteries something that only they can supply, at p rices they can dictate. This doesn't seem to be happening - nobody is bitch ing about it yet - and if there's any public interest in stopping it from h appening it won't ever hapen.

g is for sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I di spute the willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive par t of the car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better off putting in their own pockets.

ries. Price a new engine for your car and tell me if it would be worth wear ing it out to power a generator?

y of your car. Batteries are a whole lot more more flexible.

and even sold to other makers.

So even they can be items of commerce in a moderatrely free market.

s them cheap. If you have a Leaf, you are going to buy the replacement batt ery from Nissan, not Tesla and not from a third party.

So far. It would be lot easier for a third party to make a replacement batt ery than it would be for them to make a replacement engine. Think about ink cartridges for printers.

. Same with the overpriced auto batteries.

lace than the engine, and a lot more interchangeable. There's a very compet itive market for them.

battery. There is zero market for third party batteries presently and ther e is none anticipated.

None that you know about. The connection that integrates the battery into the car is a electrical, no t mechanical. It's a whole lot more flexible than a drive shaft.

te:

ote:

rote:

understand the material issues.

's on you.

em fallacious.

I have explained very clearly why the claims were not valid. There's reall y nothing else to say about it. You can deny all you want, but I've done n othing other than explain it to you in excruciating detail which you simply ignore and certainly don't refute with any evidence or even clear explanat ion.

dealers have no incentive to sell replacements at a good price... captive market.

them different enough that the same battery isn't going to be used in a ran ge of different cars.

different battery modules, the replaceable unit. They will have no incentiv e to offer good prices and will charge a heavy premium to anyone silly enou gh to wear out their battery. Then on top of that, there is no way to extra ct the power from the battery. For an auto maker to support that, there nee ds to be something in it for them other than increased manufacturing costs and warranty claims.

that they have to. With internal combustion engines - which are much more difficult to connect to the drive train - some manufacturers share engines.

You are so far from accurate. People have been swapping out engines in car s as long as cars have been made. Amateurs, not just manufacturers. Doing that with battery packs means you have to assure so many electronic featur es are compatible. No one is supporting that and they have no incentive to support that. Car makers don't want interchangeable parts. They want cap tive markets.

urced battery module, so this is an approach which has an obvious down-side .

LOL!!! Customers don't want to worry with replacing batteries, period!!! That's why they will be overly concerned with wearing out the most expensiv e part of their EVs and won't touch this arrangement unless it vastly over compensates them for the risk.

and want to see serious compensation.

never they need a new battery pack probably wouldn't be to concerned.

LOL you are really reaching now. In essence you just made the claim that everyone who has bought an EV to date is too stupid to understand the huge cost and risk of loaning out their batteries... not to mention the fact tha t they don't have the option because their cars can't do it.

separate.

Good! You found something. Go with that. So let's have everyone pool the ir starter batteries and support the grid with them! I bet there's a lot m ore kWHr in lead acid than in lithium ion presently!

for batteries because they are so expensive and a huge share of the auto co st.

ave been thoroughly captured. If the power network has an interest in cars having easily replaceable and interchangable batteries, they may end up lob bying for legislation to make thus compulsory.

You make such silly arguments. People buy EVs to drive. The batteries in Teslas will likely outlast most of the car. No one buying the cars even kn ows what it costs to replace them. I only know because I met someone who h ad to replace hers because of mechanical damage. $22,000!!! You seem to i gnore this huge number. I have no doubt this is a huge multiplier over the cost of a grid support battery per kWhr. There's no incentive for a car c ompany to sell parts cheap, that's why they don't.

apital that depreciates, anyone building an installation will realize that they wear with use like other consumables. So it will be less expensive for the utilities to simply buy their own batteries than to pay the inflated p rices for the use of auto batteries.

about the issue, and would probably demand an inflated price. Less anxious car owners might be less rapacious.

he battery is a consumable. They will look into the replacement cost and se e just how expensive it will be. Once they understand that the utility will have to pay those costs and then pay a profit on top. Clearly this is more expensive than just owning the batteries unless it is a matter of some fra ction of a percent of the time they are needed. So yes, there could be a ti ny share of the market where this would work, but considering the obstacles in initiating such a program (mostly auto manufacturer participation and t he large expense of bi-directional power transfer device) it won't get off the ground.

mestic solar power market in Australia has taken to buying a battery to sti ck on the wall as well as the solar panels to go on the roof. The bidirecti onal power transfer devices that take power from the roof and puts it into the battery when the sun is shining, and feeds it out from the battery into the house clearly aren't prohibitively expensive.

They don't have to be expensive, but they will be higher power than the 8 k W interface that comes with the car. You tout your 95% of cars not being d riven, but that doesn't mean they are connected to anything. While it is p ossible to connect anywhere there is a connection, very few places have con nections. Then the connections have to be designed to run power in both di rections. It's no small undertaking to design, build and maintain what wou ld be a huge infrastructure so parked cars can reverse charge where ever th ey are.

hnologies that will likely serve the power utility industry at a better cos t structure than auto batteries. So this market is unlikely to develop very much before it becomes obsolete.

flow batteries do seem to be better suited to the job, but the advantages a ren't huge, and seem to be wiped out by the economies of scale vis a vis ca r batteries at the moment.

orm until about 20 years ago. Any new technology will have to fight the eco nomies of scale. Doesn't mean it won't happen. Even within Li-ion batteries there are different formulations optimized for different features. Heck, t here is a company using repurposed lead-acid batteries removed from high re liability service to power backup systems for commercial facilities.

g backup batteries.

y deliver six times as much power as the grid for a few hours makes them an interesting resource, and one that the grid wouldn't have to tie up much c apital to exploit.

Just the opposite. You talk about some huge number of kW available. Pleas e put a number on this instead of a multiplier. Then we can do a bit of yo ur math for you and see what it will cost to install all the grid connectio ns you seem to think will be available.

. Every lithium based battery on the market will end up costing a premium b ecause of shortages of a few key raw materials.

ll finding new oil fields. Today's paper had a puff for rare earth mineral mines in Australia - the ores are there, but as long as China manipulated t he market to bankrupt anybody who tried to compete, they didn't get exploit ed. Paint China as a strategic threat and the mine owners can get subsidise d .

't be in short supply as the demand ramps up exponentially. Tesla is projec ting 50% growth each year for the next decade. That's a lot of batteries.

e mines to supply the market.

That's a big IF. That still doesn't mean the materials won't be in short s upply with high prices. It's a much tougher sell to get someone to invest billions to expand an industry to recoup the same profits. Investors will want to see higher rates of returns, meaning higher prices which only resul t from short supply. The thing they fear the most is a lot of expansion an d then oversupply and a collapse of prices.

ely rare, rather they are abundant. The US has huge supplies as do many sou rces.

f the market. Now they are looking for the return with higher prices. If ot hers restart production China won't repeat the low price and unlimited supp ly gimmick because their resources are finite and they need to conserve the m.

erate them (size, weight) while auto use can't. This will further accent th e cost disadvantage of "idle" uses of auto batteries.

ful when the car is parked.

ffer their batteries to informed buyers, I think the high cost of auto batt eries will make them much less useful (more expensive) than simply the util ities owning the batteries they use for grid peak supply and arbitrage.

whether the power network will pay enough to cover the wear and tear from t he extra use. If they don't, the car owners won't rent them out.

simply because the batteries are in cars where the replacement batteries wi ll not be priced competitively. I know I'm not going to stress my battery i n any way I can avoid.

s just an assumption. It's a very modular function, and trying to push the price up by making the modules less interchangable is going to run into a l ot of resistance.

arket which depends on the highest prices paid at peak times. I have seen m arginal rates exceed 10x price of normal electricity. However that will be some time off since even that portion of the market would be profitable for wholly owned batteries as shown by the many installations that are designe d to do just that.

will be done off peak so that it simply uses excess capacity lying fallow. The resulting higher utilization of the existing grid may well result in ov erall lower electricity prices.

mostly be done when the power is available. "Off-peak" refers back to the d ays when most of the power came from fixed capacity generating plants which weren't fully loaded at "off-peak" times.

upply is not matched to the demand, not enough at peak usage times, too muc h off peak. Cars can charge at off peak demand times when excess supply is available without any increase in the grid capacity. You can't say cars nee d to charge when there is a generation surplus and also claim the power net work has to be expanded to accommodate EV charging.

le power is being generated in the wrong locations for the current grid to move it to where it is being consumed. Change the location and timing of po wer consumption and the power transfer network is always having to have to be changed. Or the people who own the power network will tell you this, and charge you extra for wanting something different..

That doesn't change the fact that cars can be charged easily without expand ing any aspect of the grid other than possibly local residential distributi on in areas where peak capacity is already in use at night, like here with the heat pumps kicking in the electric coil backup in the winter nights.

If for no other reason, the primary charging time will remain PM when peopl e aren't using their cars. Trying to charge while shopping is not effectiv e and charging at work requires businesses to support it. Much easier at h ome at night.

e of auto batteries is much higher than the rate they can feed the power li ne unless expensive equipment is installed... very expensive equipment.

e will be a lot of them connected to the grid. They can be charged a lot fa ster than they are discharged while being driven, but that does take expens ive equipment. Home chargers, or trickle charging sockets in parking garage s will be able to cope with just as much current discharging as they will w hen charging, and the current can be spread over a lot of cars.

erse flow and neither are likely to do so in the future.

charging the battery when the car is parked, and discharging it (to turn t he wheels) when the car is in motion. Tesla didn't have any trouble turnin g car batteries into grid storage in South Australia's 128 MW grid storage unit, so it isn't difficult, expensive or technically demanding.

Who said it isn't expensive??? The two paths of energy flow in the car are separate and distinct. Powering the grid requires totally different elect ronics from what is presently in the car. Added cost when the goal is to l ower the cost of EVs to that of ICE or less.

You just like butting your head against walls don't you?

has to grow to accommodate EV charging.

st time we had this debate, when I did dig out links to support them. They aren't remotely controversial.

I'd like to know how many kW you think EVs can generate. You keep touting the 6x current generating capacity. How many kW? I'd like to see how this number came about. I guarantee there is some BS when it is compared to th e rest of your argument.

n that causes higher rate of wear and should be limited to required use. Th at brings us back to the issues of wearing out a very expensive battery.

argers that can take hours to charge them back up to capacity. The Telsa su per-charger is designed to serve people who need their cars recharged in th e middle of a trip, not at either end of a daily commute.

Ok, remember that you said this. So far you have only waved hands about th e when of using the charge and when of charging the car back up. I'll want to see something detailed that doesn't ignore the fact that very few autos will be participating.

rgument.

You mean the ones you trot out that I can shoot down? Yes.

will require major infrastructure changes in addition to the charge/discha rge equipment. What you are talking about would be like having a Tesla supe rcharger in every home.

ibution may be that as homes add charging equipment it may present a higher than typical load to the local distribution network. If every other home i n a neighborhood adds kW of charging equipment running continuously at the same time (such as at night) it can present the local distribution network with heavier than anticipated loads and require upgrades.

t days when the air-conditioning is running flat out.

It's both. Summer loads are 3 pm to 7 pm according to my utility. The oth er 8 months of the year it is 6 to 9 am and 5 to 8 pm. They back this up w ith rate structures.

a problem. The power grid has dealt with people building more houses, and p utting in electric powered devices - most recently air conditioners - for i t's whole existence. They will be able to cope.

"Trickle" charging won't accomplish much in 6 hours. Charging an EV at a u seful rate takes as much CONTINUOUS power as the heat coils in my furnace w hich only runs sporadically on the coldest winter nights. That's the point . One night the four homes on a common transformer may not charge at all. Another night they may all four be charging eight cars. This may not happ en often, but the system has to be able to supply those extra kW compared t o the loads they used to supply. In some neighborhoods this will require u pgrades of the local distribution. Otherwise no other part of the grid wil l be remotely stressed.

happen.

storage.

Not at all convenient with the range issues EVs have and not cheap with the high costs of replacing auto batteries compared to the industrial rates ut ilities can get on the large installations they would be buying.

orage than the lithium ion batteries designed for cars, but the famous Sout h Australian battery storage supplied by Tesla was just a bunch of Tesla ca r batteries - they were being produced in volume, and vanadium flow batteri es aren't - yet.

t because of the expense. Currently it is only cost effective for the peak time arbitrage and the very few moments when they are needed to prevent bla ck outs and brownouts. The costs need to come down considerably for them to be wide spread. Batteries in autos will remain the most expensive form of battery power available.

is tied up in very short term phase management of the grid. It has replaced a lot of more old-fashioned gear designed tp do the same job, and is makin g a lot more money out of it than it does from buying excess power when it is cheap and selling it back when it worth more. That's still worth doing a nd more batteries have been bought to do more of the same work - about half as much again so far. There's room for pumped hydro storage on South Austr alia - at least one of them to pump sea-water.

auto batteries requires there being a premium paid for the service at a pri ce higher than the actual cost of the wear on the battery. Much like many m arket, there has to be a significant profit motive to the car owner (with t he key word being "significant") and it would be more profitable for the ut ilities to simply own the capacity themselves.

you. If you can get money out of it while the car is parked on the charger, that's a win.

sitting fallow and people are very happy with that because they don't want the cars worn out.

y with making replacement batteries something that only they can supply, at prices they can dictate. This doesn't seem to be happening - nobody is bit ching about it yet - and if there's any public interest in stopping it from happening it won't ever hapen.

You seem to fail to understand that batteries are the primary issue in EVs. Tesla will be the leading EV maker for some years because of their batter y technology more than anything else. No EV maker is going to give up thei r lead in battery technology by giving away the family recipe or by using i nferior technology in their cars so others can supply batteries... unless t hey have to because they are also ran EV makers. Basement dwellers that se ll few cars.

When batteries last as long as the rest of the car, why would consumers car e about the replacement cost? Why would a EV owner want to risk that to ge t a few pennies from the utilities? It is just a silly idea on all practic al counts.

ing is for sale, in essence. I don't dispute the fact that this is true, I dispute the willingness of a auto owner to put wear on the most expensive p art of the car without a sizable profit which the utility would be better o ff putting in their own pockets.

teries. Price a new engine for your car and tell me if it would be worth we aring it out to power a generator?

ody of your car. Batteries are a whole lot more more flexible.

s and even sold to other makers.

Sure, but batteries are harder to incorporate. But mostly the companies wi th advanced battery technology won't be supplying others because it is thei r competitive advantage. Actually Tesla has said repeatedly they would sel l drive lines to others. But rest assured they will charge a pretty penny for them.

kes them cheap. If you have a Leaf, you are going to buy the replacement ba ttery from Nissan, not Tesla and not from a third party.

ttery than it would be for them to make a replacement engine. Think about i nk cartridges for printers.

Think about door knobs.

ne. Same with the overpriced auto batteries.

eplace than the engine, and a lot more interchangeable. There's a very comp etitive market for them.

on battery. There is zero market for third party batteries presently and th ere is none anticipated.

not mechanical. It's a whole lot more flexible than a drive shaft.

Just the opposite, literally. There are so many more complications in supp lying power from a battery than there are in connecting a motor to a car. It's even more simple than a drive shaft. It's the motor mounts and the bo lt pattern at the transmission. The rest is pretty straight forward.

I think you don't actually know much about cars, EV or otherwise.

As usual, you ignore the facts and make up your own without support. You i gnore important issues and the simple fact of human concerns with new techn ology. The bottom line is this ain't happening. People pay too much for a n EV to loan out the battery to the utility who won't compensate them enoug h because it costs the utility more than it saves them.

You have made it perfectly clear that you are incapable of thinking about why the proposition might be attractive.

On Monday, 14 September 2020 at 23:44:12 UTC-7, Ricketty C wrote: ...

...

Actually the DC path within the car (for fast charging) could probably support bidirectional operation with no physical changes or additional hardware.

Agreed, the external equipment would need to support the backward flow but the technology for that is getting much cheaper and more efficient.

As far as I know, none of the normal production vehicles support V2G operation although a couple of the car manufacturers are experimenting (Ford and Nissan). Nissan in particular seems to be getting serious.

Mitsubishi and Toyota seem to be promoting Vehicle to Home (V2H) to reduce loading on power distribution networks. kw

On Monday, 14 September 2020 at 23:44:12 UTC-7, Ricketty C wrote: ...

e a problem. The power grid has dealt with people building more houses, and putting in electric powered devices - most recently air conditioners - for it's whole existence. They will be able to cope.

useful rate takes as much CONTINUOUS power as the heat coils in my furnace which only runs sporadically on the coldest winter nights. That's the point . One night the four homes on a common transformer may not charge at all. A nother night they may all four be charging eight cars. This may not happen often, but the system has to be able to supply those extra kW compared to t he loads they used to supply. In some neighborhoods this will require upgra des of the local distribution. Otherwise no other part of the grid will be remotely stressed.

You are assuming that there is no demand-side management - yes ideally the supply would be able to the worst case. But provided that the cars are char ged by some reasonable time in the morning they don't need to all charge at the full rate.

The hardware is already present in many residential chargers and with some agreement on protocols can be centrally controlled. Suitable compensation in the form of reduced tariffs can encourage the cust omer to use the capability and have very little inconvenience.

The power companies already do it for A/C loads in some parts of the US and do more in other countries. Our local company PG&E just adds a small contr oller into the heating controller in return for a lower rate.

kw

be a problem. The power grid has dealt with people building more houses, a nd putting in electric powered devices - most recently air conditioners - f or it's whole existence. They will be able to cope.

a useful rate takes as much CONTINUOUS power as the heat coils in my furnac e which only runs sporadically on the coldest winter nights. That's the poi nt. One night the four homes on a common transformer may not charge at all. Another night they may all four be charging eight cars. This may not happe n often, but the system has to be able to supply those extra kW compared to the loads they used to supply. In some neighborhoods this will require upg rades of the local distribution. Otherwise no other part of the grid will b e remotely stressed.

e supply would be able to the worst case. But provided that the cars are ch arged by some reasonable time in the morning they don't need to all charge at the full rate.

I'm not assuming anything. There is no supply side management. Anything c an be done in a perfect future, but it is a long road with many hurdles to get something agreed on that is effective and takes into account all party' s interest. This is exactly what I would propose rather than have the elec tric companies go to the oversight boards and impose a universal fee for ex panding the local distribution and I have talked about this here. I just d on't think it will happen without lots of vocal users. The power companies have a vested interest in adding all manner of capital if it can be done a t other's expense.

Dominion Power did massive amounts of work to get a license for building nu clear generators in Virginia and got the legislature to allow them to bill the consumers for the half billion it cost. They may or may not ever build the plants. So why did "we" get the bill?

Being charged by "some reasonable time" doesn't cut it. Batteries are most effective when at operating temperature. EV owners charge their cars so t hey finish and are still warm when they are ready to leave on cold mornings . This is at odds with minimizing overlap of charging and heating.

e agreement on protocols can be centrally controlled.

stomer to use the capability and have very little inconvenience.

I do that now, but it isn't panning out really. The electricity my car use s is not so much of my total bill. There's also the fact that the billing is set for the generating peaks which is not the same as the residential di stribution peaks.

nd do more in other countries. Our local company PG&E just adds a small con troller into the heating controller in return for a lower rate.

Yeah, that can't really work for heating. Every heating unit cycles on and off independently so are already scattered across time. The only thing th ey can do that would be effective is to cut back on your overall heating en ergy usage during the cold spells which means your home is not warm. They tried that in Maryland and then gave it up. I'm sure the consumers paid th e bill for that too, just not up front. They have a special "fee" in Maryl and for those sorts of programs. I got freebies a couple of times from the m.

Oh, the cars can certainly be made to feed AC back into the line, but it's not so simple as putting boards in the cars. There are numerous safety iss ues involved in addition to various regulatory issues. Try connecting a so lar generation capability that isn't 100% hard wired. It won't be approved for you to throw the switch.

Bottom line is once EV owners realize how expensive batteries are to replac e they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

ace they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

Bottom line is that once the power system decides that it is sensible to us e the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage, the batteries wil l become much cheaper to replace - the car manufacturers may want to price them as single-sourced spare parts, but they won't be able to get away with it.

place they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

use the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage, the batteries w ill become much cheaper to replace - the car manufacturers may want to pric e them as single-sourced spare parts, but they won't be able to get away wi th it.

Hey SL0W MAN,

Do that and you will just wear out your expensive battery pack quicker and the EV manufacturers will revoke your 100,000-mile warranty.

To make that possible we need common standards for battery packs and removable, so can be exchanged for added mileage. As for grid storage, life could be seriously impacted by the excessive discharge / charge cycling...

Chris

e:

replace they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

o use the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage, the batteries will become much cheaper to replace - the car manufacturers may want to pr ice them as single-sourced spare parts, but they won't be able to get away with it.

d the EV manufacturers will revoke your 100,000-mile warranty.

The deal is that you get paid for the wear on the battery pack. There are a ll sort of thing that the electric vehicle manufacturers might try to do to rip off their customers, but if society as a whole sees the sense in using the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage - once most cars a re electric the parked cars could deliver something like four or five times the peak output from the grid for some hours - the electric vehicle manufa cturers aren't going to have that option.

We know you are too stupid to work out how this would work, so don't bother telling us that this doesn't make sense to you. Few things do.

te:

replace they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

to use the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage, the batterie s will become much cheaper to replace - the car manufacturers may want to p rice them as single-sourced spare parts, but they won't be able to get away with it.

Lol! As if anyone can force a company to not optimize there profits on sel ling a product. Are we going to have price controls? Batteries will remai n a proprietary product with no qualification of third party batteries for some years.

The problem is there is no market pressure to have a third party battery in dustry. Just the opposite, there is significant pressure to offer a "bette r" battery tuned to the car and vice versa. It will be decades (if then) b efore there is a market force for third party batteries because they presen tly last so long few will ever need to replace them. It's hard to create a market force from something that seldom happens.

The battery replacement thing will never fly for one very good reason. The y are so damned expensive. Are you going to buy a brand new car and swap y our 100% capacity battery for some piece of crap, been through the ringer d ross with only 70% the capacity just to save 20 minutes charging time on a trip??? Then there are the humongous logistics of operating such a batter y swap facility.

The trip issue will be resolved by slightly longer ranges. My X has a 230 mile real range (90% down to 10%) which will be reduced by the locations of trip chargers. Get that "real" range up to 320 miles and you have a car t hat can run 4 hours without charging and you will want to take a meal break anyway. Two of those are a day for most people and the car can charge ove r night.

Tesla model S has qualified a version with nearly 400 mile range so the car s are there. It's now a matter of dropping the price and size/weight a bit more to make EVs every bit as useful as ICE on trips and affordable.

The battery performance is within 20% of being there and the cost needs to drop by 33%. I expect they will be there in 5 years.

Meanwhile EVs are great for every day cars taking the kids to school and gr ocery shopping as long as you can charge at home. If you live in an apart ment or condo where they don't have charging facilities to plug in over nig ht, you have to actually think about charging. Then it becomes like an ICE having to stop for gas.

and the EV manufacturers will revoke your 100,000-mile warranty.

Yeah, 100,000 mile warranties will need to do a lot better if EVs are going to become mainstream.

rote:

o replace they will never consider burning them up with this sort of plan.

e to use the batteries in parked electric cars for grid storage, the batter ies will become much cheaper to replace - the car manufacturers may want to price them as single-sourced spare parts, but they won't be able to get aw ay with it.

lling a product.

If they "optimise their profits" by committing fraud, there are legal penal ties.

product with no qualification of third party batteries for some years.

Making a battery a proprietary product purely because it lets the car compa ny price them extravagantly is exactly the kind of abuse that consumer prot ection legislation goes after.

industry.

Not yet - it isn't a particularly large market, though it does seem to be e xpanding rapidly.

ery tuned to the car and vice versa.

And exactly how is a battery "tuned" to a particular car? At the moments ca r batteries are just stacks of identical small cells, and Telsa shipped of a bunch of them to South Australia to set up at 128MW grid-storage battery - a very different application.

But using them for grid storage while the car is parked will kill them off ever so much faster.

ey are so damned expensive. Are you going to buy a brand new car and swap y our 100% capacity battery for some piece of crap, been through the ringer d ross with only 70% the capacity just to save 20 minutes charging time on a trip??? Then there are the humongous logistics of operating such a battery swap facility.

Rick's crystal ball is very specific about the problems with this approach. Battery capacity is measurable - you put in extra charge and see how much the output voltage rises. You have to pay attention to temperature changes in battery pack while you are doing this - but Rick's crystal ball doesn't seem to have noticed that you could do it very quickly.

mile real range (90% down to 10%) which will be reduced by the locations o f trip chargers. Get that "real" range up to 320 miles and you have a car t hat can run 4 hours without charging and you will want to take a meal break anyway. Two of those are a day for most people and the car can charge over night.

ars are there. It's now a matter of dropping the price and size/weight a bi t more to make EVs every bit as useful as ICE on trips and affordable.

o drop by 33%. I expect they will be there in 5 years.

grocery shopping as long as you can charge at home. If you live in an apart ment or condo where they don't have charging facilities to plug in over nig ht, you have to actually think about charging. Then it becomes like an ICE having to stop for gas.

Of course as electric cars become more popular, apartments and condominiums will get electric charging points in their parking spaces - they won't be Tesla style fast chargers, but quite fast enough to recharge a battery in a few hours. Apartments do have a connection to the grid, and it won't cost much to add charging points that will be able to recognise which car is ge tting charged and add the cost to their rent (and not charge any car that h asn't been linked to a resident).

r and the EV manufacturers will revoke your 100,000-mile warranty.

Only if they are allowed to. If renting out the battery for grid storage be comes popular, the warranty will probably be written in terms of charging h ours rather than miles travelled.

ng to become mainstream.

Probably not. It's cheaper to buy the energy you need to drive around as el ectricity, rather than gasoline - mainly because the electricity generation route wastes less of it.

Once the production of electric vehicles ramps up to the point where the ma nufacturing economies of scale are comparable with those for internal comb ustion engine cars, that advantage will make them mainstream very rapidly. Market penetration is already rising rapidly - Rick C is an early adopter, but I suspect that our next car is going to be electric.