News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by Yizahi on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @07:55AM (#34517674)
Aren't people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid? E.g. imagine you plug in your phone for the night, but instead of a single top up change it is now constantly discharging and charging again. Lifetime of pocket sized batteries is not too great even now, and in such scenario they will go bust 2-3 times faster, in year instead of 3 or so. Also discharge swings would be probably much bigger. Instead of using say 30% of the battery per day in normal use cycle, maybe not even every day, you will now see multiple 0%-100% charge cycles daily.

New battery for small car costs 13-20k$, so if its lifetime will be shortened from I don't know, say 10 years, to 3 years, then electric company need to compensate owners accordingly and I highly doubt they will pay even 10% of that sum over 3 years.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by londons_explore on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:30AM (#34518004)
Luckily, any degradation can all be predicted ahead of time.

A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.

So a smart algorithm can decide it's worth draining the battery back into the grid if the profit to be made is more than 8 cents.

Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free. So another car owner's car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.

Obviously that means it's most economically efficient for every owner to do grid balancing merely by smartly delaying charges - and in turn price fluctuations will rarely exceed 8 cents.

The component that is missing to make this happen is cars which have code to automate this process, and markets in place that have API's to let the car buy and sell energy, and futures in energy, by the kwh. Users need not understand how it works - they just tick the tickbox which says 'charge and discharge smartly to minimize electricity costs'.

Today, those markets are typically only open to big players, cars don't have a tickbox, and wall chargers typically won't let a car put power into the grid.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by Maxion on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:51AM (#34518190)
This can be done by using a smart AC charger.

In europe (At least) the company Easee makes AC chargeres that are WiFi / 4G enabled. In Sweden (And Norway) you can connect them to a service like Tibber, which allows you to automatically enable/disable charging with the electricity price, assuming you have a spot price electricity contract.

https://tibber.com/en/product/easee

Easee chargers also have a pretty bitching API, so you can also make your own automations using e.g. home assistant or what have you.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by danuker on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:52AM (#34518201)
It worries me that if industrial-purpose batteries cost the same and have similar degradation, grid services will also decide not to charge/discharge if the profit is less than 8 cents.

This tells me that Li-Ion batteries are far from the ideal medium for grid storage.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by devmor on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:38AM (#34518733)
Batteries are extremely inefficient. Capacitors are much more resilient in terms of charge cycles (by orders of magnitude).

If one were to build a "facility" to hold short term load, that's likely what they'd use. They just can't be used in cars because they're incredibly volatile and don't hold a charge for a long period of time.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by antipotoad on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:35AM (#34519456)
The idea of super-capacitors in cars is positively horrifying, knowing how explosive just the small ones can be. At grid level though, is there anything that speaks against them?

Edit: to answer my own question, they look pretty good [1]. Significantly lower storage density than batteries (roughly 50Wh/L versus 420Wh/L for Li-ion), but still dense enough for this to be workable at grid level. The linked presentation proposes converting decommissioned power plants into grid-level capacitor storage facilities, since the transmission switchyards are often intact. Furthermore, all the technology is available today, and when built, capacitors require almost zero maintenance.

[1]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/piprod/documents/Ses...

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by londons_explore on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:01AM (#34519882)
Todays grids don't have much need for energy storage on the sub-10 second timeframe. Ie. there is rarely any money to be made by taking power from the grid now and returning it in 10 seconds.

For technical reasons, thats because the 'spinning reserve' - which is momentum of every synchronous motor and generator across the nation - already adequately handles this.

Also, large generation stations are required to have a 'load line' which damps high frequency oscillations. The load line can best be described as 'whenever the grid frequency starts slowing down, generators must put more energy in automatically'. Things like wind and solar typically don't have the ability to do that.

For human reasons, it's because electricity markets tend to be minute by minute at most.

For all those reasons, I don't think you'll make any money with capacitor energy storage banks (not to be confused with capacitors for grid scale power factor correction, which can be profitable).

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by fomine3 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:43PM (#34527128)
Isn't it expected that 'spinning reserve' will be decreasing because we shutting down dirty power plants? Possibly it is needed in the future.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by danans on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:40AM (#34519534)
> Batteries are extremely inefficient. Capacitors are much more resilient in terms of charge cycles (by orders of magnitude). If one were to build a "facility" to hold short term load,that's likely what they'd use

The problem is that capacitors (assuming you mean super and ultra capacitors) don't have much capacity compared to batteries, so their cost per MWH of storage is high even if their cost per MW is low.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by kragen on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:31PM (#34522222)
capacitors are very low energy density and very high cost per joule of storage so they are never used this way
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by wongarsu on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:48AM (#34518843)
For grid scale storage Li-Ion is a transitional technology at best. It sees interest right now because it's quick to deploy (unlike the much cheaper pumped hydro), and because so much money had been pumped into Li-Ion research and production that other battery technologies have a hard time competing.

If it turns out people don't need all the cycles out their car battery then there's value in capturing that, but new large scale installations will move to other technologies over the next decade or two.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by theluketaylor on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:05AM (#34519066)
Most cars use NCA or NMC chemistry which has 500ish cycles. Grid storage will soon use LFP which is cheaper to begin with and has 5000+ cycles. It has a lower density than other chemistries and very poor cold weather performance, making it less ideal for vehicles (though Tesla is using it in the standard range model 3 now). Those downsides don't matter for grid storage and really change the economics of charge/discharge.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by appletrotter on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:26PM (#34522170)
> has 500ish cycles

That's on the low end, like if you're fully charging/discharging the battery frequently.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by tuatoru on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:50AM (#34519697)
There are various niches in grid storage.

Li-ion are good for frequency stabilisation: initial response times of the order of ten milliseconds, run times up to several tens of minutes maybe.

For longer durations, flow batteries and other chemistries are probably better. They win because of very good cycle life and calendar life (20_000 cycles, 50 years) but tend to take longer to start up.

Flow batteries include vanadium redox, zinc-bromine, iron-saltwater (being piloted). Other chemistries: sodium-sulfur (NaS, developed by NGK and sold by BASF in Europe/NA), carbon polymer based (PolyJoule), and a great number of experimental types.

There are also thermal batteries and compressed air energy storage, and pumped hydro.

Pumped hydro is by far the biggest form of grid storage today and is not as limited by geography or cost as one might think. It can be used in the "hours to months" range of energy delivery durations.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by mnw21cam on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:02PM (#34521803)
These up and coming battery types look fantastic, but everyone seems to forget that lead-acid batteries are already way better than Li-ion or LiFePo for non-mobile energy storage, in terms of price per kWh stored.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by trashtester on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:52AM (#34518203)
> Buuuut... Delaying charging till later is free.

This functionality is already there.

> So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.

This is quite much. If you add other infra overhead, feeding power back into the grid is not going to produce much revenue for the individual unless the selling price is maybe 20 cents above the price when charging.

On the other hand, something that MAY make more sense, is if the car battery can be used to provide power to the owner's own house during short price peaks. This might allow some savings even in stable grids, but the killer app would be in grids that have rolling blackouts during high demand periods.

And even for grids where blackouts are infrequent, if your car can serve as large UPS for your house (combined with a large capacitor to keep the power stable), such functionality in the charger may be worth the cost of the hardware for many people. (Bringing the number of units up and hence the cost per unit down over time.)

Still, though, for grid stability it is probably much better to use dedicated batteries as part of the grid itself than to use car batteries.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by shagie on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:28AM (#34518608)
> And even for grids where blackouts are infrequent, if your car can serve as large UPS for your house (combined with a large capacitor to keep the power stable), such functionality in the charger may be worth the cost of the hardware for many people. (Bringing the number of units up and hence the cost per unit down over time.)

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/tesla-ne...

> Warranty Limitations

> This New Vehicle Limited Warranty does not cover any vehicle damage or malfunction directly or indirectly caused by, due to or resulting from normal wear or deterioration, abuse, misuse, negligence, accident, improper maintenance, operation, storage or transport, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

> ...

> Using the vehicle as a stationary power source

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by ben-schaaf on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:15AM (#34519188)
> All model year 2013 and newer Nissan Leafs are approved for use with the FE-15 bidirectional charger, and the automaker states that battery warranties will not be affected.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/23349971/nissan-leaf-bidi...

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by shagie on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:21AM (#34519255)
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/09/a-nissan-leaf-can-power...

> Ideal for companies with fleet vehicles, the Fermata Energy Demand Charge Management application, along with the FE-15 charger, continuously monitors a building’s electrical loads, and may draw on the Nissan LEAF’s energy to provide power to the building during more expensive high-demand periods. In states with utility demand response programs, bi-directional-enabled Nissan LEAF vehicles (MY2013 and later) are able to safely send energy stored in the battery to the grid during peak energy demand times, such as in summer months.”

> The downsides to V2G tech are that it must degrade your battery (to some extent or another) to be discharging and charging more frequently, and it leaves your battery with less charge at times when you may wish you hadn’t discharged at all. Some people will always take that tradeoff, though, and it is great to simply have an option on the table for consumers who really want V2G tech. Stay tuned and watch this space.

> The article on the Fermata Energy/Nissan announcement is not quite correct. It’s for commercial use only – not residential. The Nissan-approved FE-15 bidirectional charger is available for commercial and government fleet owners. https://www.fermataenergy.com/fe15-sales

---

The other part is that this is grid supplemental charging where there is already a steady main current to be matched. If you are using it to power an island (home or similar disconnected from the grid), it is a different situation and would require completely disconnecting from the grid with safety cutouts to make sure that when the grid comes back on that the systems are not out of phase and damage equipment.

Grid storage is a different (and arguably easier) problem than home backup in the case of a blackout.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by fomine3 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:30PM (#34527051)
V2H system with grid power outage support is available in Japan for a decade. I don't know what's the blocker in the US.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by shagie on Thursday January 26, 2023 @01:26PM (#34536236)
The cars need to be designed in a way that facilitates that rate of discharge. Not all electric cars have been.

There needs to be a specialized charging (and discharging) setup in the garage. People who charge using a regular extension cord without installing additional hardware will not be able to do V2H or V2G.

The charging setup needs to be able to cut off power from the grid to the home. This involves a more extensive modification to the home's electrical setup. Note that there's a different culture with housing in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Japan

> An unusual feature of Japanese housing is that houses are presumed to have a limited lifespan, and are generally torn down and rebuilt after a few decades, generally twenty years for wooden buildings and thirty years for concrete buildings – see regulations for details. Refurbishing properties, rather than rebuilding them, is a relatively uncommon practice in Japan, though its prevalence is increasing, indicating that attitudes towards older houses may be changing.

> ...

> The taxable value of a house is controlled by its building material. Wooden houses are considered to have a lifespan of twenty years, and concrete ones to have a lifespan of thirty years, and the assessed price depreciates each year contrary to housing markets in other nations.

This means that basically every 20 years the house is rebuilt and you've got more recent electrical setup. If you're building/buying a new house in Japan and had an EV, the incremental addition to the cost of building the house isn't significant.

The house I am living in was built before electricity was available, had gas pipes to each room for lighting (though not in use), and had functioning knob and tube wiring as recently as 2010.

I do look at a home generator (and the corresponding changes to the electrical wiring needed) - but that's not a small change. If I was getting an EV, and considering V2H as an add on, it would likely not be something I'd do.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by foobazgt on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:39AM (#34519506)
V2X (vehicle to grid, home, or load) is pretty new, but there are some vehicles out there with it. Tesla is not one of them. They seem to be more focused on solving storage with powerwall. I don't know where that's good or bad, but I do wish I could use my Tesla to jump another dead EV.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:24AM (#34519293)
>This functionality is already there.

Simple delayed charging with a timer is common, yes. The grid interactivity part? Much less so.

The few V1G pilot programs out there have been very encouraging.

>better to use dedicated batteries as part of the grid itself than to use car batteries

Fortunately, it's not an either/or. We can better optimize the total system cost by doing both.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by cogman10 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:31AM (#34520353)
We really just need a standard. The j1772 includes data lines. V2G is would literally be just controlling when the cars battery is connected to the charge circuit.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by htag on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:45AM (#34520556)
> Still, though, for grid stability it is probably much better to use dedicated batteries as part of the grid itself than to use car batteries.

Why? Every kwh we can store using car batteries is a kwh of dedicated grid storage we don't need to purchase. It can increase the speed we add new storage on the grid. It is a more efficient use of lithium and other precious metals. This "smart charge" or "flex EV" is the type of incentive utility companies can push, and something that would decrease the amount of capital investments they need to make.

I can imagine a few counter arguments for why dedicated batteries are better, but nothing that convinces me. This claim that dedicated batteries are better than car batteries has little support in your comment and I would like to understand why you believe this claim.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by trashtester on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @06:09PM (#34525461)
Mainly because the main long term cost for batteries is wear due to use. Expected lifetimes for cars match their expected lifetimes relatively well, so if car batteries are used at scale to feed power back to the grid, the probability increases that the battery will need to be replaced. (And sooner).

Then there are the efficiency downsides. Storage "at the edge" means more transmission infrastructure is needed, on average, compared to more centralized storage. Also, grid batteries can be optimized for number of charge cycles, not for charge amount per unit weight. Finally, servicing individual cars is probably more expensive than replacing batteries in a storage facility.

And this is before going into inconvenience aspects, such as risking that your car doesn't have a near-full charge when you need to go on an unexpected trip, or the hazzle of handling the payment agreements, etc, just for a couple of dollars per day in potential revenue.

In computer terms, it's kind of running mining software on your computer GPU at night. For those especially interested, it may be fun, but for the average consumer, probably not worth bothering with.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by jacquesm on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:52PM (#34521646)
For a blackout situation your car won't be of much help: any inverter that is grid tied will refuse to come on as long as there isn't a low impedance functioning grid connection present. Typically they'll measure the conditions for a minute or two, then make the connection (you'll hear a relay trip) and then bit by bit the inverter starts pushing power by advancing its on phase relative to the grid. If that doesn't stay within very precise parameters it will switch off, wait for a bit and try again.

So you can forget about your car (or even most solar inverters) to work during blackouts unless a couple of things are present:

- a automatic grid disconnection switch (aka a transfer switch)

- special firmware to allow the inverter to operate in 'off grid' mode

Both Xantrex and Victron have inverters that can do this but they are not normally deployed for such installations and they wouldn't know what to do with your car battery (voltage much higher than the ones that they require, typically 48V max).

Growatt has some off-grid units too, but those still won't satisfy the impedance requirements of your cars inverter (the grid is 'too small' so it will fluctuate too much due to high impedance).

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by kkfx on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @02:35PM (#34523059)
Fronius have hybrid inverter for 400V lithium batteries, witch are essentially the same used in cars, the missing part is the integration p.v. inverter-car's BMS.

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by jacquesm on Thursday January 26, 2023 @12:54AM (#34528138)
Yes, this lack of standardization and ability to communicate is infuriating. I don't have an EV but even without that adding a battery to an existing setup is not that simple, besides being in theory a massive fire hazard, so it can't be in the house.

With HA and a bunch of scripts you can actually get quite far in automating all this, but when the grid fails everything will shut down.

I'd love to see these babies become more easily (and cheaper!) to source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery

The energy density isn't super but for stationary applications that's fine. 6K+ cycles, fast charging, what's not to like?

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by kkfx on Thursday January 26, 2023 @01:45PM (#34536599)
Actually I have a LIMITED automation with the free inverter GPIO pins who allow a simple open/closed contact depending on how much power is available from p.v., with a bit of scripting to avoid oscillations due to a cloud passing by etc but the issues is still that almost NO APPLIANCE is designed to be piloted like that.

Beside modern water heater nothing else is available on sale and even to simply "trigger switches by software" means pay not marginal prices for IoT devices like Shelly ones, who have simply too much stuff, starting from a webui, to justify their costs.

Even the simple, decades old modbus, is BADLY spoken just by few devices, MQTT even less...

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by jacquesm on Thursday January 26, 2023 @01:53PM (#34536756)
Yes, I know what you're up against. It is quite frustrating. I have a habit now of testing new appliances by pulling the plug on them mid-cycle and then to plug them back in again to see if they will continue where they left off, do some graceful recovery (for instance: if the washer will re-heat the water or continue to work with cold water instead). Found a couple of positive surprises and an endless list of disappointments but you only really need one of each to get to a workable solution and this sort of brute force allows you to retrofit remote control into anything by virtue of a powersocket with a local internet hookup.

I can definitely recommend the 'Shelly' stuff, it's been absolutely problem free and super reliable, they have a nice range of sensors and controllers.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by kkfx on Friday January 27, 2023 @03:08PM (#34551128)
Essentially what I want is moderately simple: appliance vendors should offer an optional remote control of the machine, a simple ModBUS, like "hey, if you want, pay this and get a small card allow to replicate/bypass the physical knobs/controls of the appliance, so you can automate it/control it from remote, WITHOUT adding crappy cloud-based services, of course.

Some actually have happened, like minisplit with optional remote control module to be installed easily lifting the front top and some hot water heater, but such controls are still very rare and damn limiting...

A small example, I cite it because it's not on sale anymore (there is a slightly updated version, with a different name) my home hot water is made with a Daikin/Rotex M2O EKHHP it feature a "renewable integration" witch consist in two dry contacts who allow just to tell the machine:

- do not run

- run as you want

- run full power (heat pump, if possible PLUS classic resistive stick)

- run for an hour with heat pump only, then full power.

Those who design such logic have NO IDEA about domestic p.v. self consumption. Why the hell such logic instead of:

- do not run, except antifreeze

- do run full power (heat pump and resistance)

- do run ONLY in heat pump mode if possible

- do run ONLY with resistance

My actual "solution" is:

- knowing the outside temperature in HA, so being able to decide if I can run the heat pump or not

- decide to trigger the "run for an hour with heat pump only, then full power", switching to "do not run", switch again to "run for an hour with heat pump only, then full power"

just to limit the load to ~600-800W of the heat pump, BUT for instance sometimes I can use more, like the 2kW resistive stick BUT NOT 2kW+600-800W and for that I have no option. Sure it does not change my life, but it's absurd. Why not give such simple controls?

My VMC is even nicer: it have a range of ModBUS controls, with some registers badly enough documented I can't understand what they mean, some not documented but understandable through observation manually command the machine via it's own keyboard/display.

I've decided to buy an absurdly expensive EV domestic charger from the same vendor of my main home inverter, a Victron EVC. It claim formally to be integrated. Actually in p.v. mode all it do is staring a charge at 6A if there is at least them available from p.v. of course if there is room to more amps no way to change them, it seems to be hardcoded. Only option use the manual mode driven via ModBUS from Home Assistant. At that point I do not even understand the dams logic, the only thing better than a far cheaper charger is that it's three-phase, I have a 3-phase 36kVA domestic contract so if I need a quicker charge I can run around 7*3kW from grid. But that's all. Other domestic chargers for EVs are not better and still with absurdly high price for a simple metered socket with some extras on a mini-board computer, something who can cost around 30€...

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by marmetio on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @03:21PM (#34523625)
Additional info for others:

Your generator is not allowed to feed a non-functioning grid for safety reasons. It can't distinguish between a blackout and a utility worker disconnecting to service something. Your inverter would kill that unsuspecting person by surprising them with a generator on the side they're touching.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by Yizahi on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:55AM (#34518236)
Now that's an interesting idea. Let's see how it will unfold globally. Maybe it will indeed be painless feature.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by svggrfgovgf on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:08AM (#34518377)
People value things differently. You'd have to pay me way more than the 8 cents/kwh it cost me to use my battery. I'd want to be heavily compensated for the inconvenience of replacing the battery or car prematurely.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by martin-adams on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:10AM (#34518412)
Plus the reduced range between new and replacement.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by weard_beard on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:27AM (#34518592)
Plus my time and inconvenience of not having full range transport at all times. The time of someone who can currently afford an EV is more expensive than the time of someone who cannot.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by bryanlarsen on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:08AM (#34519117)
If I had a LiFePo4 battery that's good for 750,000 km I'd be willing to accept less than 8c because there's no way the rest of the car is going to last 750,000 km.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:35AM (#34519452)
You'd be willing to take around a penny per km of battery lifespan? I accept your decision at face-value, but it hardly seems worth it to me.

That might just inevitably conclude in "OK, I guess others are willing to ask a lower price than I am, so I won't be in a position to participate in a V2G scheme."

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by japaneseminisub on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:55PM (#34522573)
From GPs post its actually $5 plus 8c per KW.

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by dmurray on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:25AM (#34518578)
> A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.

If you can really treat the whole cost of the battery as X cents per charge cycle, disregarding the lifetime of the car/battery, this won't work at grid scale. Someone else will build a storage facility that just charges and discharges batteries, and they will outcompete rational EV owners, because they will have economies of scale and battery banks designed for this use. It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free" - eg the car will be EOL after 1000 charges but the battery lasts 2000 - he should sell the extra 1000. Or alternatively if getting 8c now is better than getting 1 charge in several years time (plausible if interest rates, energy futures prices etc are right).

However, this could be wrong. The same logic says rooftop solar can't exist without special subsidies, and a lot of people disagree with me there.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by londons_explore on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:40AM (#34518749)
Rooftop solar outcompetes solar farms because energy from a solar farm pays taxes and distribution costs before it is delivered to a user. Whereas rooftop solar energy is untaxed when it powers your laptop.

> It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free"

The EV owner has the power electronics 'for free' - ie. they have almost infinite lifespan, and just a capital cost.

Additionally, the variations of energy prices on the grid are really wide. There might be $100k/MWh for 5 minutes per year. It isn't worth a static operator paying the capital cost for the batteries (which also degrade with time) to setup for 5 minutes use per year. But it does make sense for the EV owner to do so, because his marginal cost is tiny.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by est31 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:49AM (#34518863)
This reminds me of how in Germany, before there has been a value added tax, there'd been a revenue tax. It was lower, but you had to pay it on every $ of revenue, even if your profit margin was very small. So a lot of businesses started to vertically integrate. Once the system switched to one where you get back the tax for the things your business buys, businesses got broken up or grew in only one of the steps of their supply chain.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by onlyrealcuzzo on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:41AM (#34520517)
> Rooftop solar outcompetes solar farms because energy from a solar farm pays taxes and distribution costs before it is delivered to a user.

This depends where you live and the size/efficiency of your rooftop setup, right?

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by antisthenes on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:06PM (#34527270)
> Rooftop solar outcompetes solar farms because energy from a solar farm pays taxes and distribution costs before it is delivered to a user. Whereas rooftop solar energy is untaxed when it powers your laptop.

If you completely neglect the installation part, sure. Utility-scale solar farms have massive efficiencies of scale on purchasing panels and on labor-related overhead.

It's not that clear cut, basically.

I think what the EV model allows is for private car owners to essentially sell a part of their car back in increments, if for some reason their driving behavior changes and they don't need to drive as much as they used to.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by iso1210 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:35AM (#34518684)
This does work today at grid scale, people use their home batteries (either on wheels or not) to charge/discharge to the grid in the UK all the time.

If someone builds that storage facility to do it commercially then great.

> rooftop solar can't exist without special subsidies

Yet it does

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:40AM (#34520485)
There are special subsidies for rooftop solar here in the US (Solar Investment Tax Credit). Are there not subsidies for solar where you live?

https://www.seia.org/initiatives/solar-investment-tax-credit...

> The solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is one of the most important federal policy mechanisms to support the growth of solar energy in the United States. Since the ITC was enacted in 2006, the U.S. solar industry has grown by more than 200x - creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and investing billions of dollars in the U.S. economy in the process.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by philipkglass on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:55PM (#34521686)
The same link says:

The Section 48 commercial credit can be applied to both customer-sited commercial solar systems and large-scale utility solar farms. The rate is effectively at 30% until Treasury issues guidance on new wage and apprenticeship standards. Two months later, the rate will be at 6%, with an additional 24% (for a total of 30%) available for meeting these new labor standards.

So utility-scale solar farms can get the same 30% credit as rooftop solar. They're both tax-advantaged compared to (e.g.) building a new gas plant, but the rooftop credit isn't any higher, at least not on the federal level. Self-consumption from rooftop solar may avoid other taxes, like sales tax, but in many states there is no sales tax on residential electricity to begin with.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:12PM (#34521961)
The interesting question of there being a subsidy for rooftop solar is the difference in subsidy to me between my roof having solar panels or my roof not having solar panels, not between my subsidy for my roof having solar panels or someone else's for their field having solar panels on it.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by iso1210 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:31PM (#34522234)
Not any more, other than no sales tax on the panels.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:56PM (#34522583)
??

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by iso1210 on Sunday January 29, 2023 @11:21AM (#34569527)
That's a foreign law applying to a foreign country
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by fwungy on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @02:58PM (#34523327)
Subsidies are a terrible way to run energy policy because they can change quickly with politics. Big players stay away from big commitments to subsidy based markets.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @03:50PM (#34523981)
Subsidies of “do this this year and we’ll pay you $X” work and are relied upon. Subsidies like the CF that was the SREC market are indeed highly suspect and should not be relied upon, as generators of SRECs can attest.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by mercutio2 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:41AM (#34520501)
I think you may have missed the point here.

Rooftop solar is heavily subsidized almost everywhere it’s popular. Rooftop solar isn’t a good deal for utilities or their non-rooftop-solar customers.

I say this as someone who lived off the grid on solar for years; encouraging rooftop solar may have kickstarted the learning curve for the solar panel industry, and as such may have been pretty good social policy.

But it definitely owes its existence to subsidies.

These days grid scale solar makes lots of sense, rooftop solar still doesn’t (and the subsidies are now harder to defend).

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by scythe on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:44AM (#34518786)
>It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free" - eg the car will be EOL after 1000 charges but the battery lasts 2000 - he should sell the extra 1000.

Plug in the numbers. A charge cycle is probably around 200 miles (not even optimistic). That means that 1000 charge cycles is 200000 miles. That's roughly the lifetime of a car. However, I have heard anecdotes that EVs should last longer, due to a simpler transmission, so this may be a little up in the air.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by neallindsay on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:56AM (#34518958)
"X cents per charge cycle" is a bit simpler than the reality. The actual wear cost of charging/discharging a big EV battery is cheaper in the middle and more expensive at the extremes.

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

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:19AM (#34519243)
I took their numbers only as a simplified illustrative example to teach the idea.

A real deployed algorithm would estimate the "degradation cost curve" over the entire DoD, and stop charging when total (fully-considered) costs exceed revenue.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by bryanlarsen on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:06AM (#34519087)
Power has two big costs: generation and distribution. Once rooftop solar power is below the cost of distribution it doesn't matter how much it costs to generate power; rooftop solar is always going to be cheaper.

That milestone has been hit in some places Australia already.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by mercutio2 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:45AM (#34520559)
I don’t quite buy your argument.

If the system still depends on distribution, someone has to pay for it.

It may be that rooftop solar users will be asked to pay more for that distribution than they think is reasonable.

I’m sure not excited about my grid operator proposing a $50/month minimum for electricity, it makes my panels seem worthless. But there is logic; I was being subsidized by net metering. And in future I may have to pay a cost closer to the true cost of access to the stability of the grid.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by EGreg on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:38AM (#34518730)
People measure stuff in terms of $ when they should be looking at the global resources on the planet, the garbage and the externalized costs. Until we move to a resource-based economy that takes these into account, we’ll be destroying the planet while on paper the carbon credit accounting looks perfect.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by punnerud on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:46AM (#34518812)
This already exist in Norway with the company Tibber, that have more than 400.000 users. They do just that, let you connect your EV so they adjust the charging and guarantee a lower price.

The market they can buy and sell this capacity is called an “aggregator”, and they can earn more money on this then selling just power.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by mercutio2 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:49AM (#34520626)
This is “let a large entity suck up much of the arbitrage value, with a small fraction going to you”, and already exists in most countries.

Seems quite different from “your household is an autonomous actor and you get almost all of the arbitrage value of reducing peak consumption”, which would be a radically different system (but ignores who’s going to pay for distribution, which is getting closer and closer to being the dominant cost of the grid).

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by pjc50 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:57AM (#34518969)
> Delaying charging till later is free. So another car owner's car might see on the futures market that delaying charging starting from 6pm till 11pm might save a few cents.

Yeah, I think that's far more likely. I can also see the possibility of a grid-mandated signal for "please, stop charging for five minutes, we're at capacity".

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by staringback on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:29AM (#34519357)
Let's hope you don't need to go anywhere urgently in the middle of the night... oops not enough battery to make it!
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:34AM (#34519445)
This is why you have an "always charge immediately to X%" option in the UI. You set this to whatever range an unexpected trip might require.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34518188

If your life is so chaotic that this doesn't work for some reason, don't turn on V1G

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by tzs on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:42PM (#34521467)
> A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles

After those 2000 cycles is the battery completely dead, or does it still work but at a reduced capacity?

If it does still work at a reduced capacity, does continued use reduce the capacity to 0 after a while, or does is plateau at some fixed reduced capacity and stop further degrading?

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by thrashh on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:25PM (#34522164)
It may be calculable, but is it economical? That 8 cents isn't free. If the power company pays, that means customers pay. If customers don't pay, society has to pay. There are other power storage solutions like pumped hydro that don't have to deal with battery chemistry degradation, for example, but they have higher investment costs.

This study is great but a energy storage comparison study that calculates total cost would tell us much more. Wouldn't be surprised if the Department of Energy already has or is [1]

[1] They do a lot of these studies already. i.e. https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ae17da3d-e8a5-4163-...

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by singhrac on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:58PM (#34522613)
The spread between wholesale energy prices between high and low renewable times (with low-compared-to-future renewable penetration) is around $20/MW (it’s not $2 and it’s not usually $200), or about $0.02/kwh, so this isn’t a viable return. I doubt selling into the grid will ever get you retail prices in return (someone had to maintain load power lines).

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

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by whazor on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @03:00PM (#34523354)
Here in EU, day ahead prices that are available to me as consumer are now ranging from €0.18/kWh to €0.34/kWh in the same day (winter). So that is 16 cents per kWh diff to profit from. I guess there is some energy loss with charging and de-charging.

Since prices a per day, announced the day before, the algorithm is not that complicated.

Also, if I install solar panels, the electricity just goes back into the grid, and I would get money for it. For the car it would be the same, just reverse the electricity into the grid. So it is mostly just the connecting the day-ahead prices, plus the cars and wall chargers returning electricity of-course.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by enslavedrobot on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:42PM (#34527430)
The number of cycles a battery can sustain strongly depends on its state of charge and depth of discharge. A cars battery can cycle between 30 and 70% charge for 20000 cycles or 0.8 cents/kWh according to your calculation.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by moffkalast on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:14AM (#34517849)
Well the ones with li-ion batteries ought to last at least 2000 cycles, or about 6 years with a cycle each day, but there are lots of mid tier models being made with lifepo4s now, and those last like 6000 cycles, so there is far more breathing room. They're also cheaper so you may be able to more easily break even.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by manholio on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:19AM (#34517897)
That just means people will buy daily drivers with small batteries and charge them nightly. 15 years out of a cheap compact car with near zero operating costs sounds like a good deal, still does not make sense to waste a cycle for $1 = 20kWh fed into the grid.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by ramraj07 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:17AM (#34517878)
depends on how much the demand is. If all they have want is (collectively) a small drain (less than 1-2%) once or twice a day then why not? Especially if there are some incentives provided for the same.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by Yizahi on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:36AM (#34518061)
I admit I don't know much about power grids, but I heard that they are structured in a lot of smaller zones, so if there is a local drop in the generation due to accident then probably only close EVs will be discharged, but by a lot, to compensate.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by pornel on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:50AM (#34518178)
Car batteries are not really comparable to cellphone batteries. Even among "lithium" batteries in cars there are multiple chemistries with different longevity and trade-offs (e.g. LFP can be kept charged at 100%, while NMC would rather not).

1. Cars have advanced battery management system with heating and cooling, which noticeably improves the battery life (e.g old Teslas have lost 1%-2% capacity per year over a decade, while Leaf about 3% per year, most likely due to lacking liquid cooling).

2. Cars won't let the battery discharge to 0%. Modern EVs even have an inaccessible reserve, so that when the car shows 0%, it's actually ~5%. Cars with vehicle-to-load/vehicle-to-grid typically stop giving power at 20% state of charge. Slowly cycling around 50% is quite gentle for the battery.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @08:51AM (#34518188)
> instead of a single top up change it is now constantly discharging and charging

This is where V1G beats V2G.

V1G (AKA grid-adaptive charging) just chooses when to charge the car, to efficiently spread out the grid load overnight and spatially across the network. No extra charge cycles, in fact it's probably more mild than just charging at full speed.

The key is that you need a UI setting for "Immediately charge to X%" and "Charge to Y% by Z:00." This avoids the problem where you find yourself without enough charge to get to work (or the local hospital).

> you will now see multiple 0%-100% charge cycles daily.

Even for V2G, why wouldn't there be a depth of discharge slider?

> if its lifetime will be shortened... then electric company need to compensate owners

Or better yet, owners set their car to only "bid" for a grid storage job when the cost-per-kWh is greater than the cost of degradation.

This should be the default after enabling V2G.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by dahfizz on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:19AM (#34518504)
> Or better yet, owners set their car to only "bid" for a grid storage job when the cost-per-kWh is greater than the cost of degradation.

It would have to be substantially greater. I'm not going to deal with reduced battery capacity and the hassle of replacing it early for a couple of cents here and there.

Considering the extra cost of equipment to allow the EV to send power to the grid, I don't think the economics will ever work out.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:58AM (#34518976)
That's the great thing about choice: you can choose your price! But it sounds like V1G might be a better choice for you instead of V2G.

The economics don't work out at the monthly average rate. That's why storage only kicks in when spot prices are well above average.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by theluketaylor on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:13AM (#34519177)
> The key is that you need a UI setting for "Immediately charge to X%" and "Charge to Y% by Z:00." This avoids the problem where you find yourself without enough charge to get to work (or the local hospital).

I would be happy to let the grid operator decide when to charge my EV, especially if I could inform them when I wanted charge by and have an override button to be ready for road trip departures.

I wonder how long it will be before the grid operators are subsidizing parking lot operators and businesses to install tons of smart L2 chargers so commuter vehicles are absorbing all the excess solar power available mid-day that would otherwise go to waste.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by jakewins on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:33PM (#34521332)
Thank you for posting this. This focus on V2G is nuts.

We move huge volumes of our residential portfolio every day just setting EV schedules - enough that our total residential profile peaks at market bottom price hour nearly every day, even in winter with lots of ”dumb” heating load.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by greenthrow on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:11AM (#34518424)
We are not talking about multiple 0-100% cycles daily. The places where pilot programs have been run always left the car with some amount of charge so it can be driven, and you don't normally charge NMC car batteries to 100%.

Vehicle batteries have 8 year 100k mile warranties today, and those manufacturers who have spoken on this topic have said that utilizing your battery as grid storage will not violate the warranty (Ford said this about the Lightning, which can do V2G today.)

Please stop spreading misinformation and go do some research before you spout FUD like this.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by zopa on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:55AM (#34518954)
Posting a question in an internet forum counts as doing research, surely?

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by greenthrow on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:01AM (#34519888)
Starting paragraphs of misinformation with a vague question is not a get out of jail free card. That comment was full of misinformed nonsense.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by noptd on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:00AM (#34519018)
Excluding Tesla: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34518608

Perhaps you should do more research before ending a comment on such a condescending remark next time.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by schiffern on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:04AM (#34519064)
V1G to the rescue!

Existing Tesla cars can do V1G (grid-adaptive charging), but not V2G.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34518188

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by Gordonjcp on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:06AM (#34519980)
How far down do they discharge the battery, then? Like, how much range would you expect to have at the deepest part of the discharge cycle?
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by greenthrow on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:24AM (#34520233)
This is something pilot programs are helping to figure out. The ideal case is the driver can set minimum discharge as they can set a maximum charge (that's how it works on the Ford Lightning.) on top of that many EVs have the ability to set a departure time and the vehicle will ensure it is charged to your maximum level at the departure time.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by bluGill on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:19AM (#34518503)
You are missing something: lifetime depends on how much you cycle the battery. If you take the battery from 80% to 50% 5 times feeding the grid you do a lot less damage to the lifetime than just one 100% to 0% cycle, even though the first supplied more power overall to the grid. Smart management of batteries can ensure that this happens.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by smileysteve on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:52AM (#34518899)
For some really complex lithium battery theory, if you have no long trips planned, the battery will have less wear sitting at 80% than it will sitting at 100%.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by brianwawok on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:55AM (#34519790)
Tesla UI in fact warns you if you set the charge level to more than 90% for more than 1 day in a row. 90% is the value they suggest.

I have so far "babied" my battery and max charge at 70% outside of road trips. So far, my degradation is right on track as average, which I assume is people doing the 90% charge trick - so trying to outsmart the battery hasn't worked for me yet.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by nickelcitymario on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:29AM (#34518627)
The way I read it, the paper is more interested in what happens to EV batteries when they drop to 80% of the maximum storage capacity. If I understood them, they're saying that at this level, the battery is no longer suitable for transportation purposes. So what do you do with the old battery when you replace it?

They're suggesting using these extremely expensive but no-long brand-new batteries for additional grid storage. Take the battery you don't use anymore, and instead of paying someone to dispose of it, plug it into the grid and get paid for its use.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by brianwawok on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:53AM (#34519755)
Modern fluid cooled batteries (Basically anyone but Nissan I believe?), the battery should last the life of the car. You would only really have a spare if

1) The battery gets damaged or the car is totaled (in which case, you might not want it)

2) The car is 20 years old and done with life

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by mnw21cam on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @01:04PM (#34521844)
The reason they use the 80% mark is that Li-ion batteries tend to rapidly degrade after they reach that point, so once they get there it's best to replace them.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by dsfyu404ed on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:34AM (#34518678)
>Aren't people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid?

EVs have mostly not yet filtered down to the socioeconomic rungs that have reason to be skeptical of things by default.

Based on what we know about EV battery lifetimes so far and how graceful their failure is I think your concerns are unfounded though.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by nagisa on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:54AM (#34518928)
The important part is that it isn’t necessary for people to use their cars for the _public_ good for this idea to work.

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

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

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sokoloff on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:59AM (#34518990)
If V2G is economically unattractive for car owners to participate, they won't. That's fine but everyone involved knows that. Peak power costs the utilities a substantial factor over base load power generation. There's no reason to think that the market will settle on "a retail kWh plus 20%" rather than on "2-4x a retail kWh".

For $0.04/kWh, I'm not the least bit interested. For $0.40/kWh, I'm probably indifferent. For $1/kWh, I'll buy another car (or fixed battery) just to participate in this scheme.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by audunw on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:48AM (#34519667)
> Aren't people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid?

As an EV owner, no.

We need to own a car due to having kids, we happen to have gotten one with a pretty large battery so we can easily use it for road trips too. Also because there was only one choice for battery size with the model that suited us (Ioniq 5)

But I live close to work. I fully cycle the battery maybe 2-4 times a month. I could easly double that and still not wear out the battery in the lifetime of the car. If not more.

This is in Norway, so I get that others wouldn't buy an EV with a large battery in that situation. But as EVs/batteries become cheaper in general, this will be the norm elsewhere.

And then you can flip the question on its head: if you expect to only use half of the life cycles of the battery within the lifetime of the car itself, isn't it incredibly stupid and waste of valuable batteries to NOT use it for V2G?

I suspect the cost equation will be benifical for car rental companies too, since they can get economies of scale when replacing the batteries.

> so if its lifetime will be shortened from I don't know, say 10 years, to 3 years

Uh, 3 years? Even my previous EV, a 2015 Kia Soul EV, with a pretty bad battery chemistry, only air cooling, and high cycling rate since the battery was small, is still in very good condition after 7 years. Even Leaf batteries without cooling have lasted 10 years.

First gen Nissan Leafs and Kia Souls are borderline unusable once their battery degrades to 75%, but new EVs with large batteries should still have useful range with 75% degradation, so using up the rated battery cycles (generally specified at the point where degradation reaches 80%) doesn't mean the car is dead.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by brianwawok on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:51AM (#34519714)
Do the newer batteries even degrade past 50%? The first 10% happens pretty fast, but then the curve seriously flattens. I am not sure I could get to 75% degradation before the battery just gives up and dies of old age.
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by sonarone on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @10:50AM (#34519702)
In California, recently approved NEM3 makes people involved in the energt market - paying or earning rounded rate for that specific hour. Few hours during summer months can earn you $1-2 per kW, so single discharge of EV at that time would earn you $100-200, easily outweighing the cost of degradation.

New rule has been strongly criticized about being more costly and disentivizing solar, but the one thing it does right, is insentivizing end users to do a propertine shifting of their usage.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by cogman10 on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:30AM (#34520329)
> you will now see multiple 0%-100% charge cycles daily.

Very much not likely.

You have to realize how big the batteries are on EVs. It isn't uncommon to have 80 or 100kWh batteries on EVs (and that number is likely to go up.). Even small batteries are around 40kWh.

Average home energy consumption is 30kWh per day in the US. Meaning even for a small battery you are looking at a single extra cycle per day at most. However, if you are pairing your car charging with home solar then you are looking at a more ideal charge/discharge (Possibly keeping the car between 40 and 80%)

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by RetpolineDrama on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @11:56AM (#34520748)
Well they're paying you. In the recent tesla powerwall virtual grid experiment people were printing like $60/day
Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by torpfactory on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:38PM (#34521401)
You're making very aggressive assumptions about amount of use the EV battery would be subject to, to the point of this being a straw man. You're right that people wouldn't agree to have their expensive EV battery trashed by multiple 0-100% discharge cycles daily. You wouldn't get any takers if that was your offer.

A more reasonable expectation is that people would lease a portion of their capacity. Say 20% for argument sake. You could even place other limits on it "never below 50% and above 90% on weekdays". In this example the power company gets to use between 50% and 90% state of charge in your battery on weekdays and pays you a small fee or other compensation in return.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by fwungy on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @02:54PM (#34523286)
The problem is that the battery is not the only expense on the car. You have to depreciate the vehicle's value too, because there is a good chance a BEV will be disposed of rather than have a battery replacement.

Say the lifespan of a battery is 10 years. If you lose 10% of the charges for grid storage you're looking at replacement at the 9 year mark. Until we know that the vehicle itself will be reusable at that point you need to depreciate the battery usage against the cost of the entire vehicle, and be compensated for it.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by r00fus on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @04:07PM (#34524191)
I have a 6 year old EV with very minimal degradation doing all sorts of stuff that is frowned on: charging up to 100% all the time, using fast chargers regularly, and even letting the car sit outside on hot days (it does warn me if it's >100F to get it into the garage).

So no, I'm not really worried as I don't drive a Leaf and my car has industry-standard cooling system for the battery pack.

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by goodcanadian on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @05:08PM (#34524834)
Aren't people wary about using their very expensive car batteries for the grid?

In short, no. I have a 10 year old Leaf that has been on a V2G trial for the last 3 years. (I also work for the company that built the charger.) The battery is not being deep cycled; it goes between roughly 30% and 90% state of charge. The trial has found no clear evidence that it ages the battery at all. In fact, it appears that this is better for the battery than regularly fully charging it and letting it sit. Calendar age appears to be the biggest cause of battery degradation along with deep discharging and rapid charging (which this isn't doing).

Re:EVs Are Essential Grid-Scale Storage by bradknowles on Thursday January 26, 2023 @02:28AM (#34528723)
I would never voluntarily use my vehicle to charge the grid.

I might use my vehicle to power my house, if the grid is down. But there I would prefer to have batteries inside the house that are used for that purpose, and backed up by a generator.

The power that I would have in the vehicle is my last resort of getting out of the house, if things have gotten bad enough that the household batteries are drained and the generator is down.