Electric Cars to Help Utilities Load Balance Grid

Reservoir Hill writes "A team at the University of Delaware has created a system that enables vehicles to not only run on electricity alone, but also to generate revenue by storing and providing electricity for utilities. The technology, known as V2G, for vehicle-to-grid, lets electricity flow from the car's battery to power lines and back. When the car is in the V2G setting, the battery's charge goes up or down depending on the needs of the grid operator, which sometimes must store surplus power and other times requires extra power to respond to surges in usage. The ability of the V2G car's battery to act like a sponge provides a solution for utilities, which pay millions to generating stations that help balance the grid."

Comments

will never work

[timmarhy]

The critical flaw in this, is that if you get to even 50% of the car out there having this it's a piss weak load balancer.

Re:will never work

[Swordopolis]

If you're thinking about a single car, then yes; it is "piss weak". But you're losing sight of the big picture here. According to 2004 estimates by the US Bureau of Transit, there are almost 250 million motor vehicles in the US, over 200 million of which are cars, pickup trucks, and SUV's (passenger vehicles). Imagine the possibilities if even the merest fraction of that was tapped into.

Re:will never work

[myrdos2]

To my mind, the serious flaw here is that the highest cost of running an electric car is having to periodically replace the batteries. If you talk to the owners of lead-acid battery cars, they'll tell you they replace them an average of once per year. These things are only good for a few hundred deep-discharge/recharge cycles.

Of course, the electric company might not deep-discharge your batteries, but they're still wearing them out. The battery is the weakest part of an electric car. Expensive and barely adequate to move you around. I'd prefer to wait until my battery's capacity had dropped below the point of being usable, and then let them store power in it while I buy myself a new one.

Re:will never work

[calebt3]

Hence the Ultracapacitors

Re:will never work

[fractalVisionz]

It will never work not because of the fact that the energy conversion isn't this or that, it will never work because nobody would ever want their car half full, or less, right as they are about to head out on a long trip. Long trip by todays electric standards is about 150-200 miles also.

Re:will never work

[arivanov]

Yep.

I have a summer house on the slope above a balancing hydroelectric. The thing is huge. A cascade of 5 dams along a mountain valley. The main "tank" on top is nearly 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Belmeken_004.jpg. The actual generators and temporary storage dams down in the valley are several miles in length as well. And all this just barely manages something like 30-40MW of balancing capacity.

Frankly using hybrid cars for this is a total joke. If you want to "help" the grid (and get payed for that) put some solars or a wind turbine on your house.

Re:will never work

[Calinous]

This isn't about generating electricity at YOUR desire (or sun's desire or wind desire). What you propose is the PROBLEM for which the electric car's battery balancing is the SOLUTION.
      The battery in the car will give energy back into the system WHEN THE ELECTRICITY IS NEEDED, not when you have some available.

      In the electric grid there is a minimal, constant power needed - this is the baseline. Above this, the request fluctuates - with some slow gradients and some fast gradients.
        Slow gradients are things like the move from evening to night (people go to sleep, lights go off, TVs go off). As people go to sleep from - let's say 9 PM to 12PM, there is a slow change in electricity need. "Baseload" power plants usually can change their output to account for this.
      And there are fast gradients. Some of them are small, like an entire office building starting or shutting down their lights. Some, however, are not so small - like - let's say - an entire neighboorhood starting their electric boilers at the same time). When this happens, a brownout ensures - the electric plant is overwhelmed, and its output voltage drops. Having a lower voltage, the electric boilers will consume less power than at full voltage (Power is voltage squared demultiplied by resistance/impedance). However, some consumers (switching power supplies) will just take a higher amperage, and the voltage goes even lower.
      For this kind of fast gradients, the gas turbines are used as "fast switching" sources. A gas turbine is able to ramp from - let's say 10% to 90% rated power - in the space of a couple of seconds (for comparation, a hydroelectric big plant will ramp the same in a couple of minutes or more). Ramping back might be even slower on baseload power plants (unless they choose to vent already heated steam). Yet, electricity generated from natural gas is expensive (much more so compared to coal or hydro). Also, the nuclear plants (while they might be able to ramp quickly on and off) are NOT designed to do so, and are not tested to do so. They are just slow-ramping, base line power plants.

      As such, the electricity company hopes to supplement some of this "fast switching", expensive electricity with your car's battery.

Re:will never work

[evilviper]

it will never work because nobody would ever want their car half full, or less, right as they are about to head out on a long trip.

When you're planning on a car trip, you SHUT OFF this V2G mode, and put it on the normal charging cycle.

The other 99% of the time, when you need less than half the range to get you through the day, you leave it to charge in V2G mode, and potentially make some money while it's sitting there. It's not an issue.

The only issue is the lifetime of the batteries and converters, and the amount of money the power companies are going to pay participants for providing the service.

Though, peak metering would serve the same purpose better, and once there are a significant number of electric vehicles, the off-peak loads will be high enough to make it economical to just build more power plants, and run them at max capacity 24 hours a day.

Re:will never work

[Painless Parker]

But it could work if batteries were standardized, and vehicles designed so that they could be replaced quickly. Then you could have "gas stations" with a supply of batteries. On a long trip, you'd stop in the station, pop out your discharged batteries, and pop in fresh ones. In addition, the batteries at the stations would work on economies of scale.

Re:will never work

[Calinous]

"When you're planning on a car trip, you SHUT OFF this V2G mode, and put it on the normal charging cycle.
"
This bets against the consumer's laziness, and as such is a hopeless measure.

Re:will never work

[aplusjimages]

What about .000000004%?

Re:will never work

[aplusjimages]

Well if a consumer is that lazy, then a half charged car is the least of their problems.

Re:will never work

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not quite that easy. The battery packs are/will be heavy. This will require some motorized robotic arm or something. And will the new pack you get be in the same condition as the good one you just exchanged?

Not to shoot the idea down, but there are some concerns with that concept.

Re:will never work

[sean1279]

So are you telling me I replace my batteries every year? Try 3 years, mister. The battery is the weakest part of the electric car because your perception that electric cars should go cross country is flawed. I rarely need to travel more than 50 miles in a day.

Re:will never work

[schnikies79]

And many of us travel much more than that. I rarely travel under 120mi/day.

Re:will never work

[dwarfking]

True about the size issue, probably wouldn't have Self Serve which is the norm today at filling stations, though it would be cool to have a robotic change center. You know, like the drive through car washes, but instead drive through battery replacement. Or, maybe even get back to the concept of a service station instead of a gas station.

But since today (at least in my state) all gas pumps are regulated by the State and inspected yearly, and the gas octane level is tested, there is no reason why there wouldn't also be battery regulators to check the stock periodically.

Re:will never work

[darthflo]

Driving up to a service station and quickly swapping your battery for one of theirs and a few bucks probably isn't that feasible because (understandable) worries of you or them getting a subpar quality bat (or an old, worn-down one) for your brand new one.
The best possibility I could imagine would be some nationwide (maybe international, even) organization whom you pay an annual membership fee for which they lend you one of their batteries. You could then exchange this battery at every participating service station for another, fully charged battery of this organization (and, probably, pay a few cents per used kWh and a few bucks for the actual exchange). Of course, this would involve them guaranteeing a minimum charge per battery you get and probably some degree of availability (e.g. battery exchange point within 50 miles nationwide).
Apart from the obvious privacy problems (those batteries would be sealed and might contain black boxes and tracking devices; every battery exchange you do would be logged along with how much capacity you used) this sounds like a pretty neat and possible solution to me. And since we're abolishing the outdated concept of "privacy" anyways, let's do this!

Re:will never work

[darthflo]

Some notebooks (modern ThinkPads do) allow their users to configure charge/discharge levels when connected to an AC source (e.g. "Start charging if the battery level's below 80%, charge to 95%" saves a lot of cycles if the machine isn't usually running on battery power).
Future V2G cars might (very probably if this V2G idea takes off) very well allow their users to configure a similar set of values (except it'd be the other way round). Assuming a 250 mi range with 100% charge of a 50 kWh battery (rounded Tesla Roadster values), allowing up to 20% to be used for V2G would strip you of some 50 mi of range and 10 kWh of capacity. At 65 mph that's the difference between three hours and 3:45 of driving. How many, if I may ask, 200-250 mile trips did you spontaneously (20% of the tesla's battery are charged in some 40 minutes) undertake in the past 6 months? (Less than 200 or more than 250 miles of driving don't count because the former's still possible and the latter's impossible without intermittent battery swapping or recharging)

Also, the V2G system would probably be used mostly for unexpected spikes where lots of power are required in tenths of seconds for few minutes until hydro/nuke/coal power generation is ramped up enough to cover the demand.

Re:will never work

[pentalive]

You may also trade you worn-down weak old battery for a shiny new one fully charged - works both ways.

I wonder if there is chemistry that will allow you to replace the liquid part of a battery to recharge it.. the "gas" station removes the old liquid and puts it into a charging cell, and pumps in new liquid that is "charged up". Perhaps you would only need to change the car-cells every 3K miles like an oil change.

Re:will never work

[EatHam]

will the new pack you get be in the same condition as the good one you just exchanged?

That is my same concern with propane exchanges, and why I believe they will never work on a large scale.

Re:will never work

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Nine business days out of ten, I need to drive 22 miles. That's my round-trip commute, and regenerative braking would be a big help, as I live in a valley, have to drive up onto the plain, down a steep hill into the next valley, and then back up a gentler incline to work. Then do the whole thing the other way around to get back home. After doing this commute for six years, my car needed a new transmission. P'raps saving the brakes by using engine braking down the steep hill wasn't such a good idea.

But on the tenth day, I need to drive 170 miles, 140 of them at highway speed over fairly level ground. And about three or four times a year I need to haul stuff. Lumber, sheet goods, woodworking machines, that sort of thing.

Re:will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my only concern would be the wear and tear on my battery. It would seem to me like the V2G mode would eat up your battery cycles, leaving you with an unchargeable battery a lot sooner than you'd expect.

Re:will never work

[GooberToo]

People have already put a nail in this in other posts, and rightfully so. If we have something like ultra capacitor batteries then this may have hope, as they do not have limited charge/discharge cycles. Otherwise, this concept costs car owners money to assist the electric companies. Batteries have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles and the amount the electric company is willing to pay is most certainly not going to cover the cost of battery wear and tear.

To boot, if this relies on people to actively switch modes, it is dead out of the gate. People will simply leave it in off mode all the time, effectively removing all cars from the grid.

Re:will never work

[ceoyoyo]

Plus you might want to use your car but the utility has drained half it's charge and the time it takes to charge it back up again is the second big flaw of electric vehicles.

Re:will never work

[mr_mischief]

What about unplanned trips?

Have you ever had an out-of-state relative suddenly deathly ill? Have you ever had to drive two states away to work on a customer's problem or some remote hardware on a network unexpectedly? Have you ever had to evacuate a home and go live with family for a while? Maybe you've had a call for a big job interview a few hundred miles away in the morning, but they wanted to interview you that day? Sure, these are extreme examples, but people do on occasion experience these extremes.

Plus, it's very nice to just get up on a Saturday and decide to go visit someone, to go an amusement park, or go to a ballgame. For lots of people, that can mean hundreds of miles. I, for one, live 110 miles from the closest major league ball park and about 200 miles from the stadium for my favorite NFL team.

Now, I know one response to this is that it's still great as a second car, and that's probably true. It has to be good as a primary car for many people, though, and for some people it won't be. I think the car companies are increasingly wiling to get into niche markets, but you'd have to convince a major manufacturer or two this will sell at least decent numbers before they'll even think about building them. I wouldn't call the idea a nonstarter, but it does have some serious obstacles to overcome to be successful.

Re:will never work

[Sancho]

Which is why the power companies need to provide incentives. That means either subsidizing the cars (not a good plan, if customers have the ability to turn this mode off) or paying for the amount of time that you leave it on.

Otherwise, yeah, why would a customer do this?

Re:will never work

[somersault]

I think substituting 'laziness' for 'ignorance' or 'forgetfulness' in the GP's comment would make more sense.. and also it precludes people from taking spur-of-the-moment day trips. Still, it's all an interesting idea.. hybrids still seem like a better idea for long distance driving at the moment, so that you can just top up without having to wait for a recharge.

Re:will never work

[lechuck80]

Thank you for pointing out what 95% of the people here aren't understanding....

Re:will never work

[evilviper]

This bets against the consumer's laziness, and as such is a hopeless measure.

Not at all...

You have a 3-position switch... Off - V2G Charge - Max Charge

I don't believe anyone in the world is so lazy that they can't manage one extra click of a 3-position switch.

I guess the public is too lazy to enter rooms that have dual light switches as well...

Re:will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope someone will mod this up, but the reason this will not work is because power transmission companies are already installing high voltage capacitors over their network to try to maintain a high power factor, and proper voltages. Additionally, hydro is very good at varying power, and virtually all transformers have load tap changers (ie voltage regulators). This might at best smooth out the large/slow gradients, but that is not a huge problem because they are, as previously mentioned, slow gradients.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor_correction

Re:will never work

[evilviper]

Have you ever had an out-of-state relative suddenly deathly ill? Have you ever had to drive two states away to work on a customer's problem or some remote hardware on a network unexpectedly?

No doubt you're on the east coast of the US, or someplace similar. Out here in the west, it's not an issue... Two states away is a full day of non-stop highway driving, many times beyond the reach of current electric vehicles.

Large cities, or even any cities at all, are few and very far between, so if there's any out-of-state emergency, you really need a plane ticket anyhow. Even in-state, you're either very close (Los Angeles to San Diego) or very, very far away (Los Angeles to San Francisco) and requiring a non-electric vehicle, if not a quick airline hop.

Re:will never work

[Ced_Ex]

So the electric car won't work for YOU, doesn't mean it won't work for others.

Re:will never work

[Ced_Ex]

You may also trade you worn-down weak old battery for a shiny new one fully charged - works both ways.

I wonder if there is chemistry that will allow you to replace the liquid part of a battery to recharge it.. the "gas" station removes the old liquid and puts it into a charging cell, and pumps in new liquid that is "charged up". Perhaps you would only need to change the car-cells every 3K miles like an oil change. I don't think the batteries work exactly the way you think it works.

But, that's ok, because the concept you have is already in place for bbq propane tanks. Propane tanks have a finite lifespan due to their valves or something. A company just sort of rents them to you at a full tank at a time. Once the propane is used up, you bring it back to the store, and rent another full tank, without ever worrying about the old tank. The same concept can be used for batteries as well.

Re:will never work

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

3 years? You are lucky. Batteries for gas cars don't last more than 2 years in some places (e.g. Las Vegas).

50 miles in a day isn't unusual for a busy day here. I've had to do 100 miles in a day on a couple of occasions, without leaving the Las Vegas Valley.

Also, what about road trips?

They really need to increase the range of electric vehicles, before people will buy them.

Re:will never work

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Letting it switch in and out of overdrive would likely have been worse.

Transmissions are unreliable in general, but having the engine side go faster shouldn't hurt, in fact, the tranny fluid should get pumped faster and it should stay cooler, and heat kills transmissions. 6 years isn't too bad.

They advise never towing in overdrive for that reason. Lower gears are easier on it, and shifting is hard on them, because of slipping during engage/disengage, the overly soft "comfort" shifting is bad too, upping the transmission line pressure and living with the firm shifts is said to be better. Many trannys will increase line pressure and firm up the shifts if it detects too much slip, to save the tranny from failing.

Also, if your brakes fade or fail on a hill because you didn't lower your gear, you won't have to worry about getting a new tranny, you'll have to worry about getting a new car, or perhaps nothing at all since you won't be around anymore. Runaway trucks often happen because they didn't gear down and it can and does happen in cars.

Lowering the gear is a good idea at times.

If you did much of your hauling in overdrive, that might've killed your tranny, or it just might've been its lifetime considering the load it was under.

Don't haul or tow in overdrive, unless you know your car is able to do it.

Re:will never work

[drsquare]

When you're planning on a car trip, you SHUT OFF this V2G mode, and put it on the normal charging cycle.

That's assuming you can plan a trip that far in advance.

Re:will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

But how will you know whether the brand-new battery you're swapping out is being replaced with a much older battery holding a much smaller charge after repeated reuses?

Re:will never work

[slashname3]

You nailed the comment that first came to my mind. The power company is going to utilize the batteries in all those electric cars and wear them out quicker than the owners expect. But that is not the power companies issue. They get free storage for the grid where they can reap more profit by selling power that you already paid for to charge your vehicle. Then they get to charge you again to charge it back up before you can use it. Can see it now on a Monday morning after a cold snap, the power company taps into all that stored power to cover the surge, everyone with an electric car stalls out half way to work because they don't have a full charge in the vehicle.

Really great idea, not!

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

So your point is simply that this system does not work for every single driver. Perhaps these "emergencies" happen to you often enough that you feel the need to worry and plan for them, but they do not for many of us.

Some people love to worry and think negatively about any new idea that doesn't fit their current misconceptions and rationalizations. Have you really thought this through? How often do these "emergencies" really happen? What are the chances that your car will actually be at 1/2 capacity at the time of the emergency? If the battery is only at half full, can you really not wait the hour that it would take to fully charge it? How many of those "emergency" trips did you have the range for at full, but not after being partially drained?

Your arguments seem to be more against the concept of the electric car itself. Even if you don't take advantage of V2G it will not get you to the ballgame or your job interview. That's part of the problem with living in the middle of nowhere.

But it is practical for millions of others and is an idea worth pursuing. The biggest obstacle to overcome is convincing people who think they need something they don't really need.

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

How many "big" trips can you not plan an hour in advance?

Re:will never work

[Milalwi]

And there are fast gradients. Some of them are small, like an entire office building starting or shutting down their lights. Some, however, are not so small - like - let's say - an entire neighboorhood starting their electric boilers at the same time). When this happens, a brownout ensures - the electric plant is overwhelmed, and its output voltage drops.

The voltage does not drop. The energy required comes out of the inertia of the rotating mass of the generator/turbine sets of the entire power system until the power system as a whole can adjust(which happens in a matter of minutes). The system frequency would drop if you had enough of a load spike. In actual practice, the load spike (which is usually a generator tripping off line) required on the Eastern Interconnected Network to result in even a 0.1 Hz drop in frequency is roughly 3500MW (PDF). In order words, roughly equal to a very large power plant. You wouldn't notice such a drop in frequency.

This use of car batteries is to reduce the load diversity by shaving the peaks and adding to the load during the low load periods. This is much like other power storage methods, e.g. pumped hydro.

Milalwi

Re:will never work

[corerunner]

you're assuming nobody would go into the business of recharging electric vehicles?

Re:will never work

[corerunner]

this is correct, it is intended for phase adjustment caused by a fast change in impedance

Re:will never work

[Calinous]

I think I am the victim of a misunderstanding here.
      Where I live, when load increases (like in the evening - this is a residential area) the voltage drops. I've measured once a voltage of 175V (from the rated 220V) on a power phase (I haven't measured the others).
      What could be the cause of such a voltage drop? Phase unbalance? Overwhelmed power lines and transformers? Or maybe insufficient generating capacity?
      (this is not a flame, I really would like to have your answer. I'm sorry I don't have more data)
(For your information, I've had situations with 180+V, 200+V and some 210V voltage - we have here a three phase power connection)

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

How so? Assuming there are recharging stations outside the home makes it even more practical to have the V2G option (i.e. fewer situations where having your battery at 1/2 charge is a catastrophe, imagined or real).

Re:will never work

[cbiltcliffe]

Transmissions are unreliable in general, but having the engine side go faster shouldn't hurt, in fact, the tranny fluid should get pumped faster and it should stay cooler, and heat kills transmissions. 6 years isn't too bad.

What the heck is wrong with you people? Do you expect products to be absolute shit? 6 years for a transmission is peanuts. My first car was 13 years old when I bought it at a yard sale for $350, with it's original, never removed transmission. I put a new water pump on it, (the car, not the transmission) and drove it for 3 1/2 years. Never touched the tranny. In fact, in any car I've ever driven, from the big body-on-frame rear drive V8s, to a front wheel drive four banger, I've never had to replace a transmission, and they've all started at 3 years old or older with me, and been driven into the ground. I've never even had any transmission work done, other than the occasional fluid change, with one exception: The front wheel drive four, had an computer/tranny electrical connector fail, which started causing the most abrupt shifts I've ever seen. Literally, if it went above 2000 RPM before shifting, it would chirp the front tires. Rather amusing if you're beside some fartcan Civic who shits his pants when he suddenly thinks you could blow his doors off without even noticing he was there..... But, not exactly what I'd call a transmission failure.

Somebody else says they replace their car battery every year. Every freaking year? I've had them easily last 5-6 years before! And this is in Canada, where in winter your battery has to start your car when you've just dug it out of a 4 foot snowbank, and at temperatures where engine oil bears a remarkable resemblance to molasses. Then in summer, the air conditioning is running full blast, it's 100 degrees F, (yes, it gets that hot up here) and you can't get any speed up because the moron ahead of you can't see around the moose he got wedged into his windshield last winter and still hasn't got removed.

So my question is, if our cars in Canada last 15-20 years, with the incredible temperature swings and environmental abuse that they have to put up with, what the heck does the rest of the world (specifically, you, wherever you are) do to your cars that you think 6 years for a transmission is pretty normal?

And as an aside, this is not anecdotal evidence. The reason I know this is because the Canadian government is trying to figure out how to deal with the environmental issues related to all the old cars that are on the road. According to research, 60.6% of cars sold 11-15 years ago are still on the road. 43% of vehicles sold over 15 years ago are still on the road. That's nearly 3 transmission replacements for every one of those cars, according to your figures....probably 6 or 7 if you're going with used trannys from a scrapyard. In Canada, that would get the manufacturer a lawsuit, regardless of the fact that it's out of warranty. I got some brake parts for free under warranty for that 13 year old car that I first mentioned, due to a manufacturing defect. I didn't actually have the problem, but I figured I'd see if I could get the parts for kicks, and I could. Didn't even have to see a lawyer. Just walked into the parts department of my dealer, said "I've got this car, this serial number, and this Service Bulletin says that these brake parts are a problem. Can I get these parts under warranty?" They grumbled a bit, but gave me the parts for free. For a 13 year old car.

Re:will never work

[mr_mischief]

Thanks for assuming I'm in the middle of nowhere. I live in a city of 50,000 people, thankyouverymuch. I'm not against an electric car at all, either, so please quit your flaming assumptions. I said it would work well as a second car for people who have something else. I said that. Read the damn post. I also said it would work for some people as a first car, but not for everyone.

Oh, and I consider your belittling of my major life events by placing the word in derogatory quotes a flame in itself.

You straight out say that it's practical "for others".

And fuck you for telling me what I do and don't need. I'll make the decision what I need, thankyouverymuchagain. Now go to hell.

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

You're welcome. Your sense of entitlement and unwillingness to compromise is why we are in such a tenuous state regarding energy and the environment.

I'm sure you're very proud of your town, but if all major sporting events, amusement parks, decent jobs, and even friends are "hundreds of miles" away, then I think it is fair to characterize that as "middle of nowhere". Feel free to apply that label to your own location if you want, but I didn't. That was simply how I characterized the "some people" who you were using as your argument against the practicality of V2G.

If you had simply stated that this car would not have worked for you, personally, then I wouldn't have even considered responding. But when you generalize and try to make a case for how this is an impractical solution for others I have to challenge your assumptions and give anyone who might read it an alternate viewpoint. On face value you might have a lot of people who agree that this system is impractical for them, but they (like you) either don't understand it or haven't done the math.

So all I ask is that they reconsider how often they have such "emergencies" and if they really are emergencies, and if they really need to have their own gas powered, long-range car to deal with them. I'm betting that after they do the math (which, perhaps because of my bluntness, you still fail to want to do) they will think differently.

I don't assume you're against the electric car, I state that it "seems" to be so. And that's only because I can't see how anyone can interpret your post any other way. If you can explain to me how this electric car with a range of 120 miles is going to get you to your NFL game when the stadium is 200 miles away, or "big job interview a few hundred miles away" I will take your endorsement of the electric car more seriously.

So still, the only substantial point is that "this V2G option for electric cars" will not be the best choice for every car owner in America. Which is hard to disagree with, but the same can be said for just about every type of vehicle and if people plan only for their own convenience and the worst possible eventuality we will have everyone driving monster SUVs and getting 10 mpg.

Re:will never work

[mr_mischief]

You claim I seem to be against it, yet in the post to which you responded, I said this very system isn't a nonstarter, but has serious obstacles to overcome. Would you not agree that it has serious obstacles to overcome?

A rapidly recharging electric car with a range of 120 miles is fine for the 200 mile one-way trip, if quick charging stations are available. One that has a 120 mile range at full charge, charges overnight, and only has half or 3/4 charge in the morning would not be. The speed at which the car can be charged and the availability, or lack thereof, of stations able to sell a metered charge to the driver are important factors.

When the gasoline engine was first introduced, we didn't have gasoline stations everywhere, either. Then people went for unleaded, even though leaded was the norm. It's not a stretch at all that some electric car solution could be made to work. To get wide adoption, though, it will have to be comparable in range to gasoline engines. That's my argument.

My argument has nothing to do with big city elitists bashing people who prefer to live elsewhere into submission over where to live. Actually, a huge SUV getting 10 MPG is hard to plan for decent range in a hurry, too. If you're short on cash and have your cards maxed, as many people do, then 20 gallons * $3 = $60 for a range of 200 miles. That's a drop in the bucket on most days for a day-long entertainment budget, but if it's an unplanned emergency or if you're doing it 20 days a month for work, it could really hit you. Twelve hundred a month is a house payment and utilities for a month in lots of places. The same range in a car getting 30 MPG is much more reasonable. It's too bad station wagons are "uncool" and overgrown station wagons on car frames with truck engines are "cool". I'd drive a station wagon before an SUV if I had to haul so many people around. SUVs should really be used for what the name implies -- off-road driving sports and utility vehicles. A Lincoln Navigator isn't exactly a Baja racer.

Another place people forget to look at for fuel consumption is their propensity to love overnight shipping from coast to coast, or three days around the world. Many products would be nearly as cheap manufactured closer to the point of sale, and would use much less fuel to transport. Longer delivery times and using trains more and trucks less would help, too. It's not just the private auto owners to blame, although that's certainly a big part of the problem. When your package could come in the mail truck that's coming by anyway, but you save $1 by having a 5 MPG semi haul it from San Diego to Buffalo, you're not doing the world any favors.

My point about it being hard to get manufactured has to do with the fact that not just a few but many people will not consider this particular system because of its limitations. It's a shame if it doesn't get manufactured, because it could do a lot of good.

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

Yes, every new idea has serious obstacles to overcome, but the "half-empty" problem of V2G is one of the least significant. IMO, your issue, while certainly real for a small percentage of consumers, is no more than FUD for most. Thus encouraging them to be energy pigs.

Your comparison of this real (or almost real) car to your imagined "rapidly recharging electric car with a range of 120 miles ... if quick charging stations are available" is meaningless. Of course, very few would be against an electric car if a number of significant problems were solved and I'm not saying that you are among the few who would be against this fantasy car. But that's not the issue here, it's the V2G option for an electric car (any car). If you had the quick charging ability that you imagine then leaving your house with a half-empty battery is not a very big issue. Let alone that the existing technology allows you to charge to full at home in about an hour, anyway.

To put it another way, imagine you have an electric car that you are quite happy with. Now, how much would it be worth to you to hook it up with the V2G option? I think most people would gladly take $10 a day, knowing that only in extremely rare circumstances they may encounter a situation where they have a long drive, the battery has been drained by half, and they must leave instantaneously.

So the real problem is to figure out how much this is worth to utilities (is it really $4000 a year?) and how much wear and tear it takes on the battery (and costs to replace). It may be there isn't enough margin to make this profitable for everyone, but that remains to be seen. Maybe V2G makes much more sense for something like the Tesla, maybe not.

I don't fault consumers for making environmentally bad choices regarding their chosen vehicles or shipping options when it suits their selfish needs. The key to influencing consumers in the proper direction is instead to make them pay their fair share. If gas were fairly priced (perhaps at $6 per gallon or more) to include the true costs of acquisition and environmental impact, then moving to electric cars (including V2G options) probably makes a lot more sense and they will realize they don't need to have a station wagon for those rare 6 person trips or an SUV for the large load they carry only once a year.

Please don't take my direct statements as flames, I'm just being as straight-forward as I can.

Re:will never work

[sean1279]

Well here's the thing, not everyone needs a Hummer or a truck or a car that has a 500 mile range. I don't need a Hummer and I don't need a lot of range. What I need is an inexpensive way to go to work and back and still have enough juice to pick up some groceries if need be. My car's initial cost is just under $10,000 (without economies of scale mind you) and the batteries will cost me say, 1500 every third year. Electricity is pennies. So people will buy them with limited range if they know they can save money. The big barrier is keeping an EV on the market long enough for people to catch on to it.

Re:will never work

[mr_mischief]

We're actually, optimistically, a few years from a prototype direct methanol fuel cell car. That's a quick refill, because it's a liquid that can be stored and poured. There are patents and research papers flying around about ways to purify the methanol, how to make the fuel cells more efficient, and how to deal with catalyst costs. They generate CO2, but it's from methane alcohol and methane is a much more potent gas than carbon dioxide. The CO2 output is half of combustion engines, and the rest of the exhaust is water or water vapor. There are no oxides of nitrogen or sulfur. They're already more efficient than diesel, and more work is being done on the cells. That's a good alternative to hydrogen fuel cells at least in the short term I think, especially since the distribution network and the car fuel tanks would be mostly existing technology. The fuel cell itself has no moving parts, too. Methanol can be produced from livestock and human waste and from landfill gas, thus cleaning up some of our other effects on the environment.

If ultracapacitors work out as projected, electric cars will have more power and more range than anything with lead acid, metal hydride, or lithium ion batteries. That's another promising thing.

Also, in addition to plug-in charging and regenerative braking, solar cells are becoming lighter, cheaper, longer lasting, and more reliable under stresses of temperature change. Having a car roof covered with them wouldn't charge a car fully in any reasonable manner, but it could certainly help top off the batteries.

As for rare six-person trips, I know quite a few families with four or five kids. The six or seven person trip is a daily thing for them. Again, that's an unusual need, but it's part of the market that needs consideration. A Prius doesn't fit two toddler seats, two booster seats, and two adults. A Ford Escape Hybrid does, so that's a decent compromise between efficiency and capacity for some people.

I don't mean to take anything away from the research or the researchers. There just needs to be some realism surrounding the excitement generated by this sort of announcement. As for making people pay their fair share, I had a Slashdot post not long ago in which I advocated backing the dollar with carbon credits as opposed to specific taxes on specific energy products. It seems simpler in the long run to me. Of course, while carbon dioxide is the big-news culprit lately, there are other greenhouse gases and many ways to damage the world besides warming it.

Re:will never work

[Milalwi]

What could be the cause of such a voltage drop?

Well, it's hard to say, but probably heavy loading on the local sub-transmission/distribution network. That is a local problem.

Seventy-nine percent (175/220) voltage is ridiculously low, though. I'm not sure incandescent lights would do much more than glow at that voltage. When I was doing transmission planning any simulation with transmission voltages (where percent values are admittedly a *bit* higher) below 95% would have been examined closely as a problem area.

Are you sure you have three phase power into your residence? In the United States three-phase is almost never used into homes, if you are elsewhere, then I don't know.

Milalwi

Re:will never work

[Calinous]

Thanks for your answer. Yes, there is heavy loading in the area, and we were refused increased power allocation.
This isn't at home, it's at work. We exceeded the alloted single phase power, and were relocated on a higher power three-phase connection.
      At our requests for increased power allocation, they suggested to receive our power from the industrial area - and pay for a several miles long electric line from the outskirts of the city to our office. Let's say that the price was an issue :(

Re:will never work

[ColdSam]

As for rare six-person trips, I know quite a few families with four or five kids. The six or seven person trip is a daily thing for them. Again, that's an unusual need, but it's part of the market that needs consideration. A Prius doesn't fit two toddler seats, two booster seats, and two adults. A Ford Escape Hybrid does, so that's a decent compromise between efficiency and capacity for some people. Families with four or five kids do have an unusual need, and hopefully it's becoming more unusual over time. The biggest threat to the environment is overpopulation. A Prius is a fine vehicle for those who aren't into conspicuous overconsumption (which includes having 5 kids). It's fine if the market supports an efficient vehicle that seats six, but I'm not going to feel bad for those self-indulgent induhviduals who end up paying $500 a month in gas if the market doesn't.

Re:will never work

[mr_mischief]

Hopefully this or similar work will help solve some of those problems.

Re:will never work

[Zoshnell]

Why do you think the clapper was invented?

Make money from your car?

[timeOday]

Next up, plug your hydrogen car into the grid as a generator. Don't bother pointing out that all this conversion will lose some efficiency; of course it will. But think about the brownouts California was suffering a few summers ago. People will pay good money to escape no air conditioning, and some transmission loss doesn't change that.

Re:Make money from your car?

[calebt3]

But which is greater: The cost of the hydrogen, or the amount of money that can be redeemed selling the electricity produced with that hydrogen back to the grid?

Re:Make money from your car?

[AuMatar]

The brownouts we're mainly hot air. First off, very few actually happened. Secondly, they were artificial- caused by manipulations of the power grid by energy providers for profit. There was no energy shortage.

Re:Make money from your car?

[Technician]

The brownouts we're mainly hot air. First off, very few actually happened. Secondly, they were artificial- caused by manipulations of the power grid by energy providers for profit. There was no energy shortage.

Bzzzt... Wrong.

The energy shortage was real and localized. In the Enron days, California capped electricity rates as a consumer protection move. As a result, Enron in a move to cut losses from expensive generation and as a leverage tool to negotiate new rates, took the oppertunity when fuel prices spiked to shut down a lot of ineffecient generation plants for maitenance. This was followed by a heat wave which put a spike in demand for AC. A line tripped offline. It was either blackout time as systems cascaded carrying the overload or simply drop part of the load and leave the rest of the sytem up.

http://tdworld.com/mag/power_world_technology_update_2/
"California Energy Crisis Reaches Stage Three Electrical Emergency Already under a Stage Three Electrical Emergency due to scant resources, the California Independent System Operator (California ISO) encountered a significant and sudden loss of transmission capacity Jan. 21, 2001, that forced municipal utilities in Northern California, U.S. to endure a brief 20-min transmission-related outage."

"The California ISO issued the controlled outage to keep the ac lines from overloading at Path 15, a group of high-voltage lines in central California already at their limit because of low resources in the northern part of the state."

There was a blackout because there was not enough in area generation online. The capacity of the system was stressed. A line failed. The already loaded lines couldn't take on the replacement load. Part of the area was shut off to preserve the remaining area. It was small blackout time of watch the entire area go dark as the system collapsed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
"Due to price controls, utility companies were paying more for electricity than they were allowed to charge customers forcing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric and the public bail out of Southern California Edison. This led to a shortage in energy and therefore, blackouts. Rolling blackouts began in June 2000 and recurred several times in the following 12 months."

"Energy price regulation forced suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. This scarcity created opportunities for market manipulation by energy speculators."

If you need any more proof that price controls cause shortages, just re-read the above. You can mandate $1/gallon for gasoline, but don't expect to find it for sale anywhere.

Read between the lines.. they didn't pay high prices for fuel for ineffecient plants.

"Despite the action, PG&E said it still is having trouble getting gas suppliers to comply with the emergency order originally issued January 19. PG&E has said it has enough gas in storage to make up for the lost supply under such a scenario until the first week in February. According to a company spokesperson, PG&E's storage currently is well below 50% full, or less than 16 Bcf and depleting rapidly by about 500 MMcf/d to 1 Bcf/d."

They used their reserve fuel, but could only buy fuel at a loss due to price caps and high fuel cost. Gas suppliers were not selling below market. They sold at market rates, a price the utilites could not afford.

Expensive to run generation plants were shut down for upgrades and maitenance while they waited out the high fuel prices. The spike in demand caused the inevetible. The lines into the area could provide only part of the cheaper power from elsewhere.

http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/pninter.html This is the list of the lines from Oregon into California and their capacities.

Re:Make money from your car?

[ultranova]

Next up, plug your hydrogen car into the grid as a generator. Don't bother pointing out that all this conversion will lose some efficiency; of course it will. But think about the brownouts California was suffering a few summers ago. People will pay good money to escape no air conditioning, and some transmission loss doesn't change that.

But why would you provide energy for the grid ? Disconnect the house and use the electricity yourself. The power company can't sell electricity for more than it costs to produce it yourself that way, because then no one would buy it, and they can't pay you as much or more than they get when selling it, because then they'll go banckrupt. Consequently, your best bet is to disconnect from the grid in the case of brownout, and simply power your own house with your car.

Re:Make money from your car?

[repvik]

The power company can't sell electricity for more than it costs to produce it yourself that way, because then no one would buy it, and they can't pay you as much or more than they get when selling it, because then they'll go banckrupt.

Of course they can pay you much, much more than they sold it for, they're not buying a lot. In the long run, that costs them less than a brown/blackout, even if they pay you several hundred times what you paid.

Re:Make money from your car?

[Anonymous Coward]

So had the plants which were shut down 'for maintenance' not been shut down, there would have been adequate supply. They were all magically shut down at the same time because they were inefficient and the power companies didn't like running inefficient plants on expensive fuel.

So, in conclusion, the GP was right, but looking from a different angle.

Re:Make money from your car?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bzzzt... Wrong.
human error caused the problems the reasons given were false
when did governments last tell the truth about things or anything for that matter?
This is true both in Europe and the US the usual FUD tactics

Re:Make money from your car?

[Calinous]

Electricity might be at a premium rate during the evening - when your car might provide it. Also, assuming that you are in a state that won't let you build coal plants and that the incoming power lines are already over nominal, the electricity company simply has no other way to get energy. Building a gas-fired generator is costly, takes a bit of time, and the electricity it generates is expensive (fuel costs).

Re:Make money from your car?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Well, what's wrong with having your own private grid? Switch to mains when it suits you, switch to a home system when all you need is a few 12V bulbs to read by. Power it with an auto battery fed by a cheap mains charger. It's knife switch technology.

Re:Make money from your car?

[Technician]

So, in conclusion, the GP was right, but looking from a different angle.

Correct. The utilities got screwed. They sold power that under deregulation, were prohibited from generating. Enron got into the generation and natural gas speculation and squeezed the supply. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric got stuck having to buy power at well over 15 cents a KWH and rising but had the retail price fixed at 6.7 cents/KWH. It didn't take long to go bust. From the linked Wikipedia article;

"As a result of the actions of electricity wholesalers, Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were buying from a spot market at very high prices but were unable to raise retail rates. A product that the IOU's used to produce for about three cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, they were paying eleven cents, twenty cents, fifty cents or more; and, yet, they were capped at 6.7 cents per kilowatt hours in terms of what they could charge their retail customers. As a result, PG&E filed bankruptcy, and Southern California Edison worked diligently on a workout plan with the State of California to save their company from the same fate.[8] PG&E and SoCalEd had racked up US$20 Billion in debt by Spring of 2001 and their credit ratings were reduced to junk status. The financial crisis meant that PG&E and SoCalEd were unable to purchase power on behalf of their customers."

Enron smiled and made sure the shortage in contractable delivery of fuel and electric power would run up the spot market for private generation, some of which Enron had, and Natural Gas which Enron also controlled. The Government's attention focused on the bottleneck much to the dismay of Enron. Much of the speculation deals were back-room secrets until the investigation. Then the scandal and shredding started.

"One of the energy wholesalers that became notorious for "gaming the market" and reaping huge speculative profits was Enron Corporation. Enron CEO Ken Lay mocked the efforts by the California State government to thwart the practices of the energy wholesalers, saying, "In the final analysis, it doesn't matter what you crazy people in California do, because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money." The original statement was made in a phone conversation between David Freeman (Chairman of the California Power Authority) and Kenneth Lay (CEO of Enron) in 2000, according to the statements made by Freeman to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism in April[10] and May[11] 2002."

here is a spicy bit regarding the generation shortage in the area;
"Traditional NUG contracts do not provide capacity value for the plant unless it meets stringent availability criteria during on peak periods. The plants owned by the "Big Five" not only failed to generate near their capacity during system emergencies, they only averaged operating rates of 50% to 60% during emergency conditions."
http://www.mresearch.com/pdfs/76.pdf

Re:Make money from your car?

[Anonymous Coward]

So had the plants which were shut down 'for maintenance' not been shut down, there would have been adequate supply. Because in real life, power plants never actually need any of this so-called 'maintenance'. Once you wind up the little crank, they just run forever without any kind of manual intervention. In fact, the very word 'maintenance' was invented in the mid-1980s as part of a neocon conspiracy.

Re:Make money from your car?

[ultranova]

Electricity might be at a premium rate during the evening - when your car might provide it. Also, assuming that you are in a state that won't let you build coal plants and that the incoming power lines are already over nominal, the electricity company simply has no other way to get energy. Building a gas-fired generator is costly, takes a bit of time, and the electricity it generates is expensive (fuel costs).

In order to get anything out of this arrangement, the fuel cost per kilowatt produced must be less than the what the power company is paying you. That means they would be better off buying the hydrogen fuel themselves and turning it into energy in the cheap fuel cells which must be available because otherwise the cars using them would be so costly they would be rare, which in turn would make the combined power from all of them insignificant, not to make the infrastructure to get fuel be sparse, making the annoyance value of having to refuel more often more than whatever pennies you might profit by supplying energy.

In other words, there is simply no set of circumstances where this arrangement could be profitable for both you and the power company and where it would not be even more profitable for the power company to just cut you out and just use hydrogen to generate power directly.

Re:Make money from your car?

[darthflo]

Well, what's wrong with having your own private grid?

Not gonna happen in the next few years. Especially in the U.S., energy prices are ridiculously low thanks to the economies of scale kicking in. To truly live off grid, investments in the (lots of) tens to hundreds of thousands are necessary; the typical break-even for "private" type generators seems to be in the order of 10+ years; quite a bit out of reach for the average consumer.
If you really care about the stability of your power, some UPS kind of installation is, of course, possible. On its own this will ensure short-term stability, augmented with an own diesel generator you could bridge blacked out days or even weeks, datacentre- or hospital-style. It's somewhat of an own private grid but most people find a nice stack of hundred-dollar bills a lot more attractive than 99.99% instead of 99.5% or even 98% of power.

V2G is somewhat of a combination of this UPS idea with typical griddedness. Given the (gradually more-or-less forced) switch to electric cars, it'll be a few bucks saved without (much of) an investment to many. Given enough users, it could very well turn into a great way to cheaply turn the grid into a large-scale UPS. Implemented correctly this might not only balance out spikes extremely fast and on location but keep whole blocks powered even in worst-case situations without any connection of those blocks to the outside grid.

Re:Make money from your car?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Maintenance is needed, but it is often scheduled so that only a small fraction of capacity is offline for that reason.

If you've got 10 100MW plants that need to be down for maintenance for 10% of the time, the safe and smart way is one down at a time. Or perhaps 2 or 3 down during KNOWN low load times (when safe to do so), so you can have none down during peak load. Most maintenance can be scheduled somewhat flexibly.

The insane way is bring as many of them down at once as you can and hope there isn't a demand spike. That doesn't gain you anything, even if you do it when fuel is expensive, since you will need to buy X gallons of fuel at whatever price to keep supplying all the demand. Doing it to cause a price spike is unconcionable, do it and not having enough power and causing blackouts is criminal and a threat to our nation's security.

Oops

[Power_Pentode]

Wait until everyone leaves on holiday some unusually hot 4th of July morning. The earlybirds are fine, but those leaving later have empty "tanks" because ConEd sucked out all their battery power to run all of the air conditioners.

Re:Oops

[calebt3]

Simply make it so that users can determine haw much power they are willing to give back. If 50% of the battery is used as a capacitor, one gets more money back. If 10% is used as a capacitor, one is has a longer guaranteed travel range.

Re:Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why not buy a car with a smaller battery (travel lighter)? And if you really want to help the utilities, you can buy a separate battery and leave it plugged at home 24/7.

Re:Oops

[TheMiddleRoad]

1. Batteries will have a minimum they'd deplete themselves to. 2. Hybrid cars will be able to run and produce energy, adding to the grid and recharging their batteries if needed. Future hybrids will use gasoline or diesel solely for electricity generation to run drive motors and, eventually, grid power. 3. Your post should be labeled "Slippery Slope" as that is exactly the kind of argument it is. "If we let them take a little power, they'll take it all!"

Re:Oops

[Orne]

Utilities are required to keep a capacity reserve to meet the 3-year ahead projected demand for electricity. The electric car resource (like a windfarm) is considered energy-only -- because of its unpredictability, it cannot be considered capacity.

What's even better is that all of this capacity is built for that 3 hour period in the summer when it's 99F out and everyone is running their air conditioners at full tilt.

The difference that this technology makes is price. Would you rather be paying a utility to run a combustion turbine generator at $900/MWh, or have the electric cars push their energy back into the system for those couple of peak hours at $120/MWh ? Even if it only offsets 100 MWh (approx usage of a medium sized town), I'd take it to save money.

Re:Oops

[rossdee]

On holidays people typically drive longer distances, so they will take the hybrid rather than the elctric ar they use for commuting. - and they'd be towing the boat, carrying all the kids and the dog, and their stuff, so they would need the SUV anyway.

Re:Oops

[darthflo]

Future hybrids will use gasoline or diesel solely for electricity generation to run drive motors and, eventually, grid power.

Gasoline has some 35 MJ of theoretical energy per litre. That's about 10 kWh per litre (36'000 kJ = 36'000 kWs = 10 kWh). Actual power generation tends to be very lossy, I don't have any numbers ready but 30% (3 kWh/l) probably is a way too optimistic figure.
Gasoline prices in the U.S. are some $3 per gallon (3.8 litres), resulting in some 11.4 kWh per gallon or about a quarter per kWh. The gas price will very probably go (way) up in the coming months and years, western european prices mostly are over $7 per gallon.
Energy prices, OTOH, are very low in the U.S., starting at some $.03 per kWh, very rarely surpassing the $.15 mark.

Re:Oops

[TheMiddleRoad]

In a power outage, it'll seem dirt cheap.

Re:Oops

[corerunner]

obviously you wouldn't offer energy for sale the night before a long trip

Re:Oops

[cbiltcliffe]

Why do you need an SUV to tow a boat? I've never quite figured this out.

http://www.internetautoguide.com/reviews/45-int/midsize-cars/chevrolet/impala/2000/index.html
This is what I'm driving right now. Really nice car, and would have no problem towing a small to mid-sized boat. Of course, you wouldn't want to tow a yacht with it, but most people have motorboats, rather than yachts. Besides....there's always the Crown Victoria/Grand Marquis.

Of course, a big part of this is to have the brakes on the trailer properly calibrated so they actually stop the trailer pretty much by themselves, rather than just dumping most of the braking through the hitch onto the car's brakes. Since most people don't bother to do this, it's no wonder people have brakes wear quickly when they're towing a trailer.

AC Propulsion

[TheMiddleRoad]

AC Propulsion, who built the car, has been working on this technology for quite a long time. Their press release is at http://www.acpropulsion.com/releases/10-24-2007.htm. They also have a solar powered, unmanned aircraft, an electric sports car that long precedes the T-Zero, and good taste in car bodies since they've used the Sportech and xB for their major projects.

Re:AC Propulsion

[JBHarris]

[They have] good taste in car bodies since they've used the Sportech and xB for their major projects.

(emphasis and link mine)

Clearly your idea of good taste and my idea of good taste are at odds with each other. Nothing about a box on wheels is aesthetically attractive to me.

Battery Life?

[corsec67]

Most batteries have a nominal number of charge/discharge cycles that they can go through before they can't hold any capacity any more.
Why would you wear out an expensive, hard to dispose of part of a car like that?

(Unless the cars use Supercapacitors or a high-speed flywheel, in which case the only issue is transformer/inverter losses, which might be balanced by transmission losses if the usage is near to the car, in which case this could be a good idea)

Re:Battery Life?

[Leuf]

If it were actually economical to do this, then why wouldn't the utilities just buy the batteries themselves rather than pay you to use yours?

Re:Battery Life?

[corsec67]

Yeah, what is the different between these cars and a UPS-like device in every garage? If this was really good for the power company then they would give people a discount for putting a battery-inverter thing in their house, properly connected...

Re:Battery Life?

[DigiShaman]

I always get a chuckle when I hear about these flywheels. Sure, all modern engines have one, but the kind needed to store that much potential energy is a disaster waiting to happen.

1. Taking a highway ramp to another perpendicular highway at 50Mph is stressful enough. Imagine how changing direction with a fucking GYRO will do. You'll end up in the wall eventually.

2. Imagine getting into a car wreck with that thing fully spooled up. There had better be some form of safety device in place, because I'd hate for that flywheel to fragment like a hand grenade!

In short, these might be great for a bus or 18 wheeler assuming the engineering problems are worked out. But no way in hell would I want one in a 4 door sedan or smaller.

Re:Battery Life?

[corsec67]

Problem 1: have 2 flywheels, going in opposite directions.

Problem 2: the flywheel has about the same amount of energy as gasoline a car normally carries, right? Just make the flywheel out of something that breaks in to a ton of little pieces that gets caught by the container (as suggested by the wiki article) Anything that is energy-dense is going to have this problems, like Sony Batteries, gasoline, etc.

Yeah, high-speed flywheels are a long way off from being usable to run a car, but one of the biggest hurdles for some people is charging it fast enough. The flywheel could be made to take it, but the electrical grid is a bit more tricky.

My personal favorite non-gasoline energy transport is high-pressure air, like in a compressed air car

Re:Battery Life?

[seb42]

Good question, Vanadium redox battery is used in wind power stations to store energy. It can handle many thousands charge-discharge cycles and then only replacement of the membrane is required to extend the life. Can also be recharge by replacing the electrolyte. - It is more complex and has relatively poor energy-to-volume ratio. So may be it would be better for buses than cars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

Re:Battery Life?

[evanbd]

Well, if it's not economical to buy the battery for the purpose, but you're going to buy the battery anyway to use it in the car... A lot of batteries (especially LiIon) have a significant component of their lifetime measured in years of service, not charge cycles. So if it's not costing you anything to use the battery like this, and you already own it...

Re:Battery Life?

[Duhavid]

Maybe because this way the power company doesnt have to give any discount?
Heck, they will probably charge the recipient of the power and the
car owner for this "service".

Re:Battery Life?

[evanbd]

For Lithium Ion batteries, most of the lifetime of the battery is determined by time since manufacture (with modifiers for how charged it is -- 40% or so is best, iirc -- and temperature and such), with charge cycles being a second-order effect. Of course, that assumes you take good care of it, but the charge controller in the car should be able to handle that anyway.

Of course, as you say, supercapacitors are the interesting technology. AIUI, all the pieces exist in the lab to make supercaps that beat LiIon for storage density. Now it's just a small matter of engineering (tm) before we can use them in cars. They're getting better quickly, in terms of what you can actually buy.

Re:Battery Life?

[ls671]

Problem 1: have 2 flywheels, going in opposite directions. This won't work, try holding 2 bicycle wheels rotating in opposite directions, you will still feel the resistance to movement, not very convenient for non-stationary setups.

Re:Battery Life?

[ydra2]

I've actually tried this experiment. If the flywheels, in my case bycycle tires filled with water, are held horizontal to the plane of the earths gravity there is no problem whatsoever. All you have to do is turn in one direction or the other and they spin a minute fraction of a percent faster or slower depending on the direction. If you want to suddenly veer upwards into space you have a slight problem, but thats what most land vehicle want to avoid most. Flywheels really do wonders for stabilizing a vehicle without affecting turning right or left at all. They only affect turning to another plane, which we normally don't want to do. But even if we have to, such as when going up a hill, the worst they do is hold you flat to it on the upside and gently lower you down on the down side.

Re:Battery Life?

[dargaud]

I will not want a flywheel in my car EVER. If you think a wheel coming off was dangerous, think again when something heavier and rotating at _much_ higher speed just goes free or explodes into shard in every direction. It's really the stupidest idea ever. And yes, I've been in a car that was crushed to 1/3 its former size by a high-speed idiot.

Re:Battery Life?

[ls671]

Good luck going through bumps in the road with your horizontal plan stabilizing device, not mentioning flying over holes in the road or loosing contact with the road where pavement elevation slightly changes ;-) Anyway, flywheels need mass to store energy and energy is needed to accelerate/decelerate that mass, kind of circular logic.

Re:Battery Life?

[darthflo]

Yeah, what is the different between these cars and a UPS-like device in every garage?

Most every household has a car, how many people you know would spend $20k on a UPS sitting in their garage, increasing their power stability from 99.5% to 99.99%? (You read /., so the percentage of people you know willing to do this ought to be about ten times the percentage of a representative subset of your respective country's population. May not apply if you know rich people living in extremely poor countries (drug lords, crime kingpins) with very shaky power supply.)

Re:Battery Life?

[darthflo]

I fully agree. The only thing worse than such a flywheel would be packing cars full of highly flammable substances with the tenfold energy density of TNT.

Re:Battery Life?

[icebrain]

Problem 2: the flywheel has about the same amount of energy as gasoline a car normally carries, right? Just make the flywheel out of something that breaks in to a ton of little pieces that gets caught by the container (as suggested by the wiki article) Anything that is energy-dense is going to have this problems, like Sony Batteries, gasoline, etc. The problem is that gasoline won't release all of its energy at once (unless it's atomized and ignited, but in an accident most of it would still remain liquid). A flywheel would let go all of its energy at one time. This problem exists with big capacitors too...

And IIRC, there's no feasable way to get reasonable range out of a compressed-air car. You'd need a really light vehicle, very efficient motor, and your gas would be stored at an incredibly high pressure--and then you're back to the "instant release of energy" problem.

Re:Battery Life?

[homer_ca]

Most bumps in the road do not exceed the suspension travel of the car. The few exceptions like parking lot speed bumps and dips for drainage are taken at very low speed.

Re:Battery Life?

[Sancho]

It's economical because it's like renting. The power company rents your battery for the tiny period of time that they need it. Maybe over the lifetime of your car, they've needed to rent 100 total days (probably a high estimate.) They pay out considerably less than it would cost to buy the battery outright. Then you handle disposing of the battery and buying a new one.

Compare to the cost of buying the batteries outright (they're expensive) and still having to replace them every 5 years or so.

Re:Battery Life?

[ls671]

Even if you get it to work for the bump problems and all, which I doubt, you are left with the mass problem :

Anyway, flywheels need mass to store energy and energy is needed to accelerate/decelerate that mass, kind of circular logic. Do you have a solution for that too ?

Personally, I don't think it would work for cars. Maybe it could work for express passenger trains that only have to accelerate once and stop once (ex. Washington-Baltimore) ot if the trains stopped long enough at every station in order to recharge the flywheel to make it to the next station. Note that braking could also accelerate (rotation speed) the flywheel since trains brake slowly. Just have the train accelerating the flywheel in order for the train to brake.

A passenger train weight could be say, 95% flywheels - 5% payload, giving it chances to work. For a personal vehicle, it seems like utopia to me.

Cheers,

Re:Battery Life?

[rubberglove]

I don't know - the cars at theaircar.com look pretty damn cool.
200km range, with a 3-4 minute refill time (at a *gas station, one day) or 3-4 hours with your own compressor at home.
That seems like plenty to me... Plus, they're going into production in 2008!

Another convenient thing is that we will still be able to call them gas stations....

Re:Battery Life?

[Spoke]

With proper battery management the number of times a battery can be charged/discharged goes up significantly.

For example, in hybrid cars on the market today, for example the Prius, the battery management system carefully monitors battery voltage levels and maintain a battery charge between 40-80%. This is because discharging batteries below 40% capacity and charging cells past 80% will reduce the number of cycles you can get out of a battery. The Prius battery pack as a whole has a very low failure rate because of this. Typically when the battery pack goes "bad", the majority of the cells that make up the pack are fine, but a couple cells have failed and no longer hold a charge which kills battery pack performance as all current must flow through those bad cells.

The battery management system if a full electric car can be even more sophisticated. For example, the battery pack in the Tesla has every individual cell monitored for voltage and performance. In addition, if a cell goes bad, it has the ability to bypass that cell so that performance of the battery pack as a whole will remain largely unaffected.

The number of cycles a battery will endure between 60-100% charge or between 0-40% charnge is significantly lower than the number of cycles it will endure between 40%-80% charge.

With careful charge management, batteries could easily be used to help offset load peaks in the grid by ensuring that the cell pack state of charge remains within set boundaries designed to minimize the effect on battery life. Doing so will basically make any reduction in cell life due to it's use on the grid negligible.

Re:Battery Life?

[lnjasdpppun]

If I remember correctly, flywheels store energy proportional to mv^2, so the good ones actually use the rotational velocity to get energy density, not mass. Of course that leads to problems with energy being lost to friction and having something spinning really fast, but flywheels don't have to be heavy to store lots of energy.

Re:Battery Life?

[lnjasdpppun]

So we should use diesel that doesn't ignite at atmospheric pressure. Gasoline is still better than having something spinning at high speed ready to unleash all that energy if something breaks. Gasoline requires an ignition source before it gets really dangerous, certainly there are some around during a crash but to me it seems like the flywheel is more likely to release all its energy than gasoline.

Re:Battery Life?

[ls671]

Hahem, nor batteries need to be heavy to store a lot of energy, well at least in theory. Both batteries and flywheels can store unlimited power in theory.

In practical, both batteries and flywheels have the inconvenient of being heavy. high energy densities flywheels store 0.130 KWh/kg and batteries around 0.040 KWh/kg

Gasoline is around 13 KWh/kg so 100 times more than the best flywheels. So to go as far as 10 gallons of gas, you would need a 6000lbs flywheel. Then you still wouldn't go as far because of the additional you would be carrying.

Do you still think flywheels in cars is a good idea?

Re:Battery Life?

[tcgroat]

You hit it on the head! The article says the Scion XB conversion has 50,000 mile projected battery life and 120-150 mile range. In round numbers, 400 full cycles. So: each full 35kWH battery cycle incurs the average cost of replacing about a dozen of the 5,088 Li-Ion cells in the battery pack; every 3kWH sent back to the grid averages one cell's replacement cost. AC Propulsion doesn't say what the battery replacement cost will be, but given the $55,000 price tag for EV conversion it's likely to be more than the utility will pay for Vehicle to Grid power storage.

If battery storage was an economically viable means for levelling electric power demands the utilities would buy their own batteries, cutting out the customer-as-middleman. If there's no business case with their massive wholesale buying power, it certainly makes no sense for customers who pay retail prices for replacement EV battery packs.

So then...

[LOTHAR, of the Hill]

It's like a giant Carpacitor!!!

It's only really useful if it can store 8.6 jigawatts!

Re:So then...

[chuckymonkey]

1.21 Jigawatts. Your nerd card has been revoked. Please leave it at the door on the way out along with your glasses tape, pocket protector, and UID.

Re:So then...

[splashbot]

i thought it was only 1.21 Jigawatts

Re:So then...

[TapeCutter]

Not so fast, it is possible that the temporal stability of train tracks took precedence over fuel efficency in the final design of the transportation device.

Re:So then...

[chuckymonkey]

Heh, touche.

Re:So then...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's 1.21 GIGAwatts. I think you know where the door is.

As an aside, I'm fairly certain "Jigawatts" is the measurement of potential energy contained within a stationary Will Smith.

Re:So then...

[denis-The-menace]

FYI: true geeks only correct others if they are certain of the answer.

Re:So then...

[modemboy]

It's actually 1.21 Gigawatts.
Or do you think jiga is a SI prefix.
Pot, kettle, black. Hand in your nerd card sir!

Re:So then...

[LOTHAR, of the Hill]

Giga is a SI prefix. in the movie it's Jiga. I never knew how many zeroes are in a Jiga.

as far as the 8.6 goes well...

Real nerds don't preview their posts.

Better ways to balance load

[Jeff1946]

Probably lose 10% of power charging and 10% discharging if you are lucky. You want your car in the daytime when loads are heaviest. Must not put power on lines when linemen are working on them. Pumped hydroelectric is much better and currently used to store power. Always thought wind powered generators near a pumped hydroelectric would be a good thing. Also large windfarms in places like west Texas generating hydrogen would also be a reasonable thing to do. When we run out of natural gas, the existing gas distribution system could be used to pump the hydrogen all over the country much as we do with natural gas today.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[QuoteMstr]

Pumped hydroelectric is great where it's available, sure, but what would, say, New York City do? Pump out New Your Harbor?

Re:Better ways to balance load

[edwardpickman]

Natural gas lines are't suitable for hydrogen. It's the smallest atom so it tends to leak from most any seal. Part of the problem with hydrogen is storage and distribution because of leakage. If you leavea full tank of gasoline for a year it's still full. Even the best hydrogen car storage system would be empty long before the year is out. If you are driving constantly the loss would be manageable but even leaving it overnight would result in some loss and a weekend might see a noticeable drop in tank pressure. I love hydrogen but it seems best suited for short term storage and it's strictly a storage medium and not a true power source. I think it's better suited to home storage system of power for solar and wind and recharging electric cars. Even the hydrogen cars that are being proposed are in truth electric cars they just use hydrogen instead of batteries. I've never heard of a hydrogen car getting 200+ miles on a tank like some of the latest electric cars using batteries. Recharge times are the biggest problem but that's strictly for long range travel since most people see home recharging as a plus with electrics. Capacitors may eventually solve this problem. Either way electrics if the cost of batteries came down would still work for 90% of the driving and even at current prices they are radically cheaper than hydrogen fuel cells. Platnium is going to keep the costs high. Electric is practical today and works with or current infrastructure. People complain about costs and range on electric cars I can't see them accepting hydrogen cars that cost many times as much and have a range of a 100 miles. Nano processes may drop the amount of platium needed but it will still be expensive and the storage problems still exist. You still need an energy source to produce hydrogen so there is no real difference between it and electric cars.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Animats]

Pumped hydroelectric is great where it's available, sure, but what would, say, New York City do? Pump out New Your Harbor?

No, they pump out a lake in the Catskill Mountains.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Anonymous Coward]

Pumped hydroelectric is great where it's available, sure, but what would, say, New York City do? Pump out New Your Harbor?

So, where does New York City's power currently come from? SOMEWHERE ELSE!

How about upstate New York? (where there are hydroelectric dams)

Re:Better ways to balance load

[cheater512]

Put it in the skyscrapers? :)

Big tank in the roof, big tank in the basement.
That would be kinda cool actually.....

Re:Better ways to balance load

[QuoteMstr]

Cool!

Re:Better ways to balance load

[wvmarle]

Natural gas lines are't suitable for hydrogen. It's the smallest atom so it tends to leak from most any seal.

Hydrogen is small, but hydrogen always comes as an H2 molecule, and that is not quite the smallest gas particle. Helium is the smallest gas particle: the smallest of the noble gases, and it comes as single atoms. Leak tests are always done with He. If He doesn't leak, then nothing will. A nice extra is that He is virtually absent from our atmosphere, so any trace amount He found indicates a leak.

That said, it is certainly true that sometimes methane does not leak where H2 does. However this can never be in large quantities, as otherwise the methane would also be leaking already. I don't know whether this is a really significant problem with the existing gas network.

Much more likely an issue I think is hydrogen fatigue: many metals become brittle when exposed to H2 gas over a long period of time, and break. This is a serious issue in the design of chemical reactors, surfaces that are exposed to H2 can not carry any pressure load (so they build a second vessel around it, that carries the pressure, the gap filled with another gas such as nitrogen).

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Nqdiddles]

Well, I don't actually need my car ALL day. I've seen scenarios described where the vehicles could be plugged in at home, then again at work (while you're in the office and not using it).
Planning the controls on the system would require a fair bit of effort/balancing, but it could be worth a look.
If perhaps the manufacturer (or power company, or someone else)"leased" the batteries to you, or otherwise minimised the effect of the increased use on your hip pocket, and allowed for user customisable minimum charge limits for letting it flow back onto the grid... I'm sure I can think of situations where I would be willing to try it.
I use my car for 30 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes at night, during the week. Give me an incentive, financial or otherwise, without noticeable drawbacks, and I'd probably be happy to let them make use of my battery.
Getting this sort of system to the point where it actually made a difference (ie. enough of these cars in use) would be quite a challenge though.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Chrisq]

You want your car in the daytime when loads are heaviest. Must not put power on lines when linemen are working on them.

True, but it could be a lot more efficient if your work's parking lot allowed you to plug in. Some companies could even use the power directly to reduce their peak workday load (for example where I work most people turn their computers on after arriving and turn them off before leaving). This would also have the advantage that they would only need to leave enough power for half your commute.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[blackest_k]

Would it be better if power was generated at work perhaps a big wind turbine, you could designate part of the car park to these types of vehicles and use the car park as one big ups. If enough power was generated you could use it at home as well.

Then there are the carbon offsetting taxes since hopefully you would be generating a surplus most days. On days you didn't you would pull it back from the cars. Assuming a 400 mile range and most people would be commuting in less than 10 miles each way you could probably tap into about 75% of the cars capacity and still leave enough to allow the car to be used for the daily commute.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Muad'Dave]

...or a lake in the mountains of Virginia. I've visited this station - it's very cool. The generators are the pumps - power in, water up. Water in, power out.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[necro81]

Pumped hydroelectric is much better and currently used to store power. Always thought wind powered generators near a pumped hydroelectric would be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the places where wind energy is a great resource generally aren't great places for pumped hydro storage - geographically speaking. Wind energy is most available and steady in large flat expanses - the American midwest, near shore ocean, etc. Pumped hydro storage is most available in places that have large natural height differences that can be easily exploited - hilly terrain.

I actually like pumped hydro storage a great deal - it tends to be a very efficient way to storage utility-scale energy and is very fast and responsive. But, batteries can be nearly as efficient, respond almost instantaneously, and have much greater energy density. Even lead-acid batteries, which have a low energy density among batteries, can store 30-40 Whr/kg, or 108-144 kJ/kg. A pumped hydro storage system would need to exploit a height difference of 10-13 kilometers to have the same energy density (on a mass basis). In terms of volume energy density, lead acid batteries score 60-75 Whr/L, or 216-270 kJ/L. A pumped hydro storage system would need to exploit a height difference of 21-27 kilometers to be claim the same.

My approach is to say that all of these technologies have a roll to play in our energy infrastructure, certainly much more than they have now. The more the better - it breeds system complexity, but it can also breed agility and redundancy. What is used on a regional basis will depend a lot on what's available naturally, and how much infrastructure needs to be built around any one solution

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Jeremi]

Put it in the skyscrapers? :)

Big tank in the roof, big tank in the basement.

Just make sure your flood insurance is paid up.... ;^)

Re:Better ways to balance load

[Jeremi]

Unfortunately, the places where wind energy is a great resource generally aren't great places for pumped hydro storage - geographically speaking. Wind energy is most available and steady in large flat expanses

Of course, if you've got a pumped-hydro storage facility right there, you no longer need the wind to be that steady, since you've decoupled the energy production from the energy consumption with your giant water buffer. And a lot of wind farms are built along mountain passes since there's a lot of wind there too. A third idea, however, would be to store the water underground, perhaps in a cave or abandoned mine? Pump it up to level one, let it drain back down to level two...

Re:Better ways to balance load

[folky15]

Hydrogen will leak right through the pipes - it doesn't have to be at a poorly fitted joint. The plastic pipe used for natural gas infrastructure is not dense enough to prevent seepage of the hydrogen. Natural Gas companies tried to install a sealant in the form of aluminum sleeving inside the plastic pipe to allow for future hydrogen distribution, but this proved to be unacceptably expensive.

Re:Better ways to balance load

[neon_geniuses]

Sorry, but you're forgetting Graham's Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham's_law/

You may believe that diatomic Hydrogen gas is actually "bigger" than a Helium molecule (with only one atom), which would mean Hydrogen leaks out more slowly.

In reality, the speed of the molecules determines diffusion.
Given a constant temperature (temperature= avg Kinetic Energy of molecules)
Kinetic Energy=.5m*v^2

Hydrogen leaks out 1.414 (radical 2) times faster than Helium. This is true for a balloon, pipes, or really any small hole (small enough that diffusion dominates over fluid dynamics). H2 gas really is the most difficult gas molecule to handle, especially for the problem of metal hydrides you mentioned and the embrittlement of pipes.

It could be worse. We'd really be in trouble if we needed methyl isocyanate to run our cars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster/

Re:Better ways to balance load

[corerunner]

welcome to offshore wind turbine generators

Down-sides

[Tablizer]

Computer voice: "Sorry, you cannot go to Vegas this weekend, we need your batttery."

Re:Down-sides

[Anonymous Coward]

Good News, Gambling Addicts!

Re:Down-sides

[ceoyoyo]

... to power Vegas.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand. What incentive would we have to give the power back to the grid? Are the electric company really going to pay us more than the money we need to charge the car and the lost due to inefficiency?
If that's the case, someone would probably start a business just to store electricity.

Trust your utility company?

[syousef]

I'm sorry but you can't use your car to go out this weekend. We need power to go to the grid. Try again next weekend, or apply for our weekend special at www.yourcarhahaha.com. Have a nice day.

Re:Trust your utility company?

[pentalive]

Actually, they would never tell you not to take your car - they would just raise the rate you pay for electricity when your car is not attached to give you and 'incentive' to leave your car.

PG&EEEE: "So you would like to visit Vegas this weekend? Have a nice trip, see you Monday. By the way we calculate a weekend with your car unplugged will raise your electric bill by $500.00. (hope you win at the casinos!)"

Interesting juxtaposition to the nuclear story

[Burz]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/09/2049204

Summary

[PhotoGuy]

Okay, this didn't make a lot of sense to me at first, thinking that electric cars are the last things in the world to be providing excess power to the grid... But in fact, it is a neat idea.

Basically, all of the batteries of these cars, connected to the grid, act as a bit of a buffer/reservoir of power for the grid. Think water tower, where water is stored there temporarily, to be pulled out during times of peak demand. Similarly, the batteries of these cars (presumably only a portion of them) provide some power to the grid during times of peak demand, and charge back up otherwise.

The one downside is that your battery would not be at 100%, if you had been providing some reservoir capacity to the system. Hopefully this would be offset by savings or other incentives. (From my experience, with any battery powered device, I'm not willing to spare any capacity; there never seem to be enough. I've never had an electric car, however).

photovoltaics

[bcrowell]

If the utilities really want help balancing the grid here in California, they should change how they handle photovoltaics. I have photovoltaics, and there's a strong disincentive to buy more than enough capacity to handle 80% or so of your annual use. If you overproduce over the course of a 12-month billing period, they just take your extra electricity for free, and say thank you very much. If they would pay for excess production, I'd have a strong incentive to add more panels on my roof, and those panels would produce a lot of electricity on those hot Southern California days when everybody's using their AC.

Re:photovoltaics

[calebt3]

Technically, I think they give you credit. So you won't have to pay anything for a while if you ever stop using solar (the only reason I can think of for this is for if you move and can't get new panels installed).

Re:photovoltaics

[TooMuchToDo]

It really depends region to region. In northern Illinois, with ComEd, we have net metering. When we use power, the meter spins forward. When we dump unused generation capacity into the grid, our meter spins backwards. Typically, most people have a small electric bill if they have a wind turbine or solar panels. Those with much larger systems may have credits for most of the year with the utility.

Re:photovoltaics

[Mr_Reaper]

your power meter will roll backwards if you start producing more energy than you consume and the utility has to pay you the going rate for the energy. problem is unless you have a couple of acres of panels dont expect to see alot of $$$

Re:photovoltaics

[ddoctor]

In Australia, if you overproduce solar, you can sell it back to the grid. Some of our big power companies sell solar panels, and use this as a selling point.

They'd be stupid not to, given the strain on energy supply. Plus, they can tally up your excess as "green energy" and sell it at a premuim.

Re:photovoltaics

[pentalive]

your power meter will roll backwards if you start producing more energy than you consume and the utility has to pay you the going rate for the energy. problem is unless you have a couple of acres of panels dont expect to see alot of $$$

It depends on where you are, here in california the meter works that way, but the electric company will only pay you enough to bring your bill to zero.

But what happens on a sunny cool day where the electric company may not have a great load but they get lots of electricity from photovotalics?

Re:photovoltaics

[aegl]

There's a limit to the credit that they'll give (in my case the utility is PG&E).

The deal works like this ... the meter is still read every month, and a nominal electricity bill is generated based on the net energy used/produced. The part of this bill that isn't related to power generation is due and payable that month (for me this is typically about $12-$13). The remaining amount is just left in the computer. At each anniversary of the system installation, there is a what PG&E describe as "true-ing up" the bill. The net amounts for the twelve preceeding months are added up, if I owe PG&E, then I must send a cheque. If they owe me, their shareholders get a nice little boost, but I get nothing. The credit is not carried over, nor can it be applied to any other amounts that are owed to PG&E (e.g. the non-energy related part of the bill, the gas bill, any other PG&E accounts I may have ... nothing). So I can get credit for extra energy I produce in the summer, but I must use that credit in the following winter or lose it. Well in fact my anniversary is in November ... so for me it actually works out that PG&E doesn't require that I pay for the energy that I use across the winter under the assumption that I may generate enough surplus in the summer to cancel out the debt. Even if I don't manage to get to zero, which I certainly didn't this year, I at least get an interest free loan all year.

I'm not sure what would happen if I moved mid-year ... I expect that I'd have to true-up with PG&E when I closed the account for that address (and they'd keep any credit).

This acts as a disincentive to install extra capacity ... the homeowner pays the cost for the extra panels (and larger inverter) but gets nothing for any extra energy that is produced.

In practice this may not be that big of an issue. The tiered pricing for electricity also acts as an economic lever ... the first few kilowatt-hours of energy each month are priced low enough that solar on the roof cannot compete with them. It is only economically sensible to install enough capacity to keep net usage into the bottom tier.

Re:photovoltaics

[calebt3]

Well in fact my anniversary is in November...I at least get an interest free loan all year. I must remember that.

Back To The Future

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Take a DeLorean
2. Charge it up
3. Go back in time one day
4. Sell back to grid
5. ???
6. PROFIT!

Re:Back To The Future

[belg4mit]

That better be a damn big battery and profit to offset the 1.21 gigawatts;
unless you live in an area plagued by predictable thunderstorms.

Re:Back To The Future

[GuldKalle]

What if you only need the 1.21 GW for a microsecond? Then it might be feasible.

Re:Back To The Future

[mrjb]

Brilliant! The only problem is having to wake up to 'I got you babe' every morning.

Re:Back To The Future

[blugu64]

Just walk on over to the local corner store and pick up some more plutonium. Duh.

Re:Back To The Future

[aasmodeus]

Who said battery? You've got a FLUX CAPACITOR, haven't you!? This is the era of carpacitors, not batteries...

Offloading costs more like it.

[SeaFox]

The ability of the V2G car's battery to act like a sponge provides a solution for utilities, which pay millions to generating stations that help balance the grid.

So since I'm now taking over that job, how much will my cut be?

I thought so.

And this wont have any impact on the life span of my car's expensive battery will it?

Oh, it will.

Well since they're now saving so much money, they'll be able to lower utility ra---
What's so funny?

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[evanbd]

You do realize that this already happens, and the electric companies do pay you for it? Industrially, power compaines give large consumers a break on rates if they get a say in when the power gets used, for exactly this reason. Some consumers need fairly large amounts of power, but don't care when they use it. Think refrigerated warehouses -- you can turn off the refrigeration for hours to reduce load without trouble, but then they have to use more later. In exchange for doing this, they get reduced rates. In some areas, you can also buy time of day metering -- handy if you have grid-tie solar panels, as you get to run the meter backward at day rates, then come home and use power at night rates.

I imagine they would be happy to extend the same basic deals to your car. And as you point out, you're not required to do so, so if they want you too, they'll have to offer such things.

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[Myfyr]

From the press release mentioned by an earlier poster:

"The benefits of V2G for the grid are compelling, but drivers get something too. PJM pays millions of dollars to generating stations for their help in balancing the grid. Once vehicles assume that role on a significant scale, their drivers will get paid too. That is why FERC Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff likes to call the cars CashBack Vehicles - plug them in and get cash back."

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[Bert64]

Some countries provide this benefit to consumers as well, making electricity cheaper during a specific period (usually late at night)... People set power hungry appliances like water heaters, dishwashers, washing machines etc to come on at these times.

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[pentalive]

Some consumers need fairly large amounts of power, but don't care when they use it. Think refrigerated warehouses -- you can turn off the refrigeration for hours to reduce load without trouble, but then they have to use more later. There was a story some time ago about frozen storage being used to save energy - during "energy available" times cool the storage down colder than normal, during "energy needed" times turn off the refrigerators and save energy. I wonder if it hurts food to take it down to -40 instead of -30?

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[iabervon]

It's a lot more likely for individual consumers that their cars will store less electricity than their homes use, and they'll plug them into the house's electrical system, so that they do the same thing this article describes but on a purely personal scale: use the car's battery to allow them to get power from the grid at off-peak times, when it's cheaper, and store it until times when the power costs more.

This is also beneficial in exactly the way the article suggests, since time-based price differences for consumers, if the consumers systems can respond to them, will help to load-balance things that can't be made as responsive. And if the area prices electricity such that individuals get credited the current price of electricity for power that the grid pulls from them, they can get credits on their power bills for storing it across price changes.

I'm a bit dubious of the possibility of individuals getting money for just being available (rather than by playing the obvious commodities market), but it's entirely plausible to do it with corporate car fleets.

Re:Offloading costs more like it.

[evanbd]

You can get this in many parts of the US. Usually, though, you'll have to pay for the new meter yourself, which makes it not as attractive.

This isn't new...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked (as an electronics technician) for a company called Wavedriver in the UK doing this just over 10 years ago. They used a 3 phase power converter to convert from DC from the storage battery to three phase AC to drive a motor for electric cars. You could use three phase from the grid to charge the battery but you could also put it back into the grid when needed. Bacisally to do just what TFA talks about. The other cool thing (than I never understood how it worked) was that you could use the system to correct power factor back to unity. I think the idea was a large building could use one of these systems along with a large battery. The system would event out the power somehow by changing the power factor.

I believe the company was bought by Powergen in the UK then I don't know what happened to them. I remember once we put one of the systems in what was then a Norwegian PIVCO car. Later that crowd were bought by Ford and the PIVCO became the 'Think'. I think Ford then killed it?

Charge / Discharge Cycles?

[Phleg]

Won't a technology like this put the battery through excessive charge / discharge cycles, killing battery life?

Re:Charge / Discharge Cycles?

[TooMuchToDo]

Depends on the charge/discharge amount. Most hybrid batteries are never charged past 70% of full capacity, and never discharged past 40% of full capacity. This greatly extends their life (although, that's specific to the hybrid synergy drive in Toyota and Lexus hybrids using NiMh batteries. Lithium Ion batteries are much more friendly to full discharge, but need a more complicated battery management system)

Re:Charge / Discharge Cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lithium-ion battery life is generally measured in flat time from manufacture, not cycles. It's very hard to kill them with excessive use.

Yeah. Right. Sure.

[mbstone]

So the electric co. will buy the electricity in your car battery (at wholesale prices). Then when it doesn't need the power anyore, it recharges your battery (for which you are billed retail). Do this several dozen times a day and watch your bill skyrocket.

Re:Yeah. Right. Sure.

[evanbd]

Umm... no? Right now, you can already do time of day metering, where you get charged different rates at different times. People with solar installations like this, because their solar panel returns power to the grid at daytime rates, and then they come home at night and use power at evening rates. You could do that with a battery too, except that batteries are expensive so no one does. Unless you already happen to have the battery...

Re:Yeah. Right. Sure.

[wvmarle]

So the electric co. will buy the electricity in your car battery (at wholesale prices). Then when it doesn't need the power anyore, it recharges your battery (for which you are billed retail). Do this several dozen times a day and watch your bill skyrocket.

My parents have a solar cell installed on their roof, subsidised by the government (they live in The Netherlands). On a good day, if they do not use any electricity, they should be able to see the electricity meter run backwards. I can imagine that is the same in this case: if electricity is withdrawn, the meter runs backwards. So no billing would be done at all for that stored electricity, and it doesn't cost the user anything.

Re:Yeah. Right. Sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

but his point is, how do you know the utility company will pay you what they charged you to fill it up? it's a reasonable question, though I think most people would just assume that this is a given or else no one would do it. but your analogy is bad since in one case you're buying the elecricity that you're selling back and in the other case you're producing it. I don't see how it's hard to comprehend that buying something for a high price, selling it for a low price, and then buying it back for a high price is different than producing something and selling it and then buying less of the thing you made.

Super Mario Bros Called...

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

...and they want their idea back!

how to solve the energy crisis

[rice_burners_suck]

I have a much better solution to the problem of energy. There are thousands upon thousands of people behind bars. All they have to do is hook up rows and rows of stationary bicycles, where the flywheels of all the bicycles on each row are connected by an axle, at the end of which is a coil that serves as a generator. Put the inmates on these damn things for 18 hours a day, with groups of inmates starting and stopping at two hour offsets to make sure that there will be electricity generated 24 hours per day, and make them pedal hard to generate that electricity. Each bike would be fitted with a device that senses if the inmate on that bike isn't pedaling hard enough, and if so, the taskmasters assigned to that group of bicycles would use a whip to provide incentive to pedal harder. The prison walls could be built out of lead-acid batteries arranged like bricks to house excess energy.

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[thaig]

I have never understood why gyms don't do this? I mean why do all those people using excercise bicycles and lifting weights etc not get paid to *go* to the gym rather than the other way round? They could be generating electricity and getting a free workout at the same time.

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes about 2000 kilocalories to feed one person for one day. Assuming you could convert all that energy to electricity, you'd get about 2.34 kilowatt-hours.

The market value of 2.34 kilowatt hours is about 35 cents.

How much do you pay for a day's worth of food?

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

i dunno, those niggas can run pretty fast already, do you really think it's a good idea to train them? you wont when they're running down the street with your PS3

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[zakezuke]

I have a much better solution to the problem of energy. There are thousands upon thousands of people behind bars. Oh you were talking about prison.... I had this mental image of people sitting behind a bar, drinking, and happily peddling away.

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[Bert64]

Not very much...
But people already go to gyms to exercise, and most gyms have lights, music playing, air conditioning and tv screens... They could offset some of their own electricity costs by hooking up the machines to generation devices and advertise themselves as a "green" gym.

Re:how to solve the energy crisis

[rice_burners_suck]

The crazy thing is that if you use the exercise bicycles to power the gym (and do it to reduce the gym's costs) and then advertise it as a "green" gym, you could actually charge people MORE to work out there, and there are lots of people who would actually pay more, just because it would make them feel good about attending a "green" gym, so you could have your cake and eat it too!

I have the best solution.

[Calledor]

Take everyone who is playing WoW and hook them up matrix style to their PC. Simply feed them with IVs and suck their nerd warmth to provide for people who do something more than waste power on extra FPS in a damn mmorpg.

The bill won't skyrocket

[Anonymous Coward]

Peak usage is around noon each day.

The idea is that the electric car dumps power into the grid at peak usage times at premium rates and charges at night at discount rates. AC Propulsion and the companies that license their technology (Tesla Motors being the most noteworthy right now) all have this built into their vehicles. You can use this to actually reduce your total utility bill. The kicker is that your car has to be plugged in to the grid at the time of peak usage.

Alternatively, how cool would it be if there were enough cars plugged in to the grid to allow the utility to simply turn off an entire generating station at night.

As for the problem with the batteries... yes, battery lifetime will be an issue. Lithium cobalt oxide batteries like those used laptops, cell phones, and the Tesla Roadster have a fairly low cycle life and are thus probably best not used to replenish the grid. Future cars, like the Tesla "whitestar" and the Chevy Volt will very likely be based on lithium iron phosphate batteries (A123 and others) and will have much, much better cycle life at the expense of reduced capacity.

Finally, about the conversion efficiency: There are conversion losses. The power electronics should be able to do the conversion with efficiencies in the range of 90-94%, and the chemistry efficiency of the batteries is very high (though I don't know the number off the top of my head, for LiFePO4 it's extremely good). It's worth pointing out that simple transmission of power from generating station to the consumer also incurs losses. Odds are power put back on the grid in a residential area by a car will be consumed in the vicinity, thus cutting transmission losses.

So overall, this is a very good thing. It will, however, require careful management to ensure its equity and utility - but then again, what technology doesn't?

Why not stationary, cheaper batteries?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are willing to pay for cycles through your fancy EV battery, why not just buy some cheaper, stationary batteries and put them in a warehouse next to the plant?

The only way this makes sense is to modulate the charge rate, NOT cycle the battery. The cost of cycling an EV battery is too high.

But...

[Vskye]

I bet fireman hate this concept, since if you have a fire and kill the power, the car would still feedback juice into the house. Friend of mine had his house burn down a few years ago, and they specifically asked him about a UPS.. Just something else to think about.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

The car would just need to sense power out on the grid and shut down. Most grid interactive inverters have this feature (indeed you can't install one legally without it where I live).

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, plus the firemen in question were probably more worried about a UPS battery exploding than getting an electric shock.

Re:But...

[lxw56]

That's right, plus the firemen in question were probably more worried about a UPS battery exploding than getting an electric shock. IAAFF, and we are more concerned about electric shock. After a major fire, fire crews usually tear apart walls and ceilings to look for hidden fire. While doing so, they often end up pulling electrical wires out as well. On a major house fire, my department will shut off the gas and pull the electric meter.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

IAAFF

I Am A Fucking Fireman ?

Cost effective?

[WoTG]

"The ability of the V2G car's battery to act like a sponge provides a solution for utilities, which pay millions to generating stations that help balance the grid."

Yeah, it costs millions with whatever system they currently use (I'm guessing shipping the power to neighbouring power grids). How much will configuring tens of thousands of (currently non-existent) electric cars to take and feed the grid cost? How much is fixing all the meters so that they read properly in "generator" mode? Who wants to validate all the electrical systems involved?

To me, this sounds like a solution in search of a problem. Ship the power next door, that system has worked for decades. Let the guys who have hydro dams handle the spikes and valleys.

This is actually an excellent idea

[ShooterNeo]

Two key notes 1. Expensive, high energy storage devices will be developed for practical electric cars. The actual technology might be flywheels, ultra-capacitors, or some type of super battery. Point is, that's a huge investment in energy storage that shouldn't go to waste. 2. It's not as inefficient as you might think - the power released would not go far, probably just to help power the suburban house/apartment building that the car owner is plugged in to. 3. This technology would dovetail perfectly with mass adoption of solar. If Nano-Solar or another firm makes enough large scale cheap solar panels, it would become economically expedient for ALL new power generation to be solar panels. (since the cost/watt might be about half what burning coal costs) But, solar won't power the grid at night, and so storage would be much more valuable to utility companies in a few decades. (not at first, normally there is less load at night and conventional power plants work fine at night)

Re:This is actually an excellent idea

[XaXXon]

isn't putting a power-storing flywheel in a car a bad idea? It would have to be light and spin extremely quickly.. but if it were fixed to the car, it would make the car hard to turn. I guess you could "float" it and let it spin regardless of the orientation of the car? Wow I don't want to get in an accident with one of these cars, though.

Alec Brooks

[IvyKing]

The author of some of the literature was Alexander Brooks, someone I knew from high school and UC Bezerkeley. Alec's degrees were in Civil engineering, not electrical engineering, and I found quite a few points where he would have done well to consult more with the power systems crowd - and a specific recommendation would have been to consult with Prof O.J.M. Smith of UCB.

A real simple control method is to pay attention to frequency - go from charging to feeding back when the fequency drops below nominal and increase charging when the frequency goes above nominal. If the response is fast enough, this alone would do wonders to increase damping of power system disturbances.

Re:Alec Brooks

[TheMiddleRoad]

Go Bears!

dumb way to do something smart

[Anonymous Coward]

theres much better tech comming out to just this... power load balancing.

beacon power company

basically they have large arrays of flywheels that will spin up to store electricity say at night when demand is lower. and spin down to give it back out during the day when the demand goes up.

they just got approval and all that for installing a large array somewhere in the US.

http://www.beaconpower.com/

And. it doesnt add a bunch of crap to our cars.

Re:dumb way to do something smart

[speculatrix]

there have been schemes to use flywheels to provide short term energy storage for vehicles: google for it.

for slow urban vehicles like buses I can see this would be OK, but I would hate to hate a high speed turn in my flywheel-storage sports car and have it start to flip over!

Re:dumb way to do something smart

[BlueParrot]

That can be solved by hooking up two flywheels spinning in the opposite direction, thus having their angular momentum cancel. You would have to take care to ensure that you withdraw energy from each one of them at equal rates, and there could be trouble if one of them failed ( thou arguably no worse than if other critical components of your car failed ). Dunno if you could get it cheap enough thou. You would need some damn high quality bearings to keep them spinning safely at the necessary velocities.Batteries would probably be cheaper.

Re:dumb way to do something smart

[speculatrix]

oh dear, I should have put a smiley in there. Read the articles about Bitterly's flywheel powered vehicles and you'll see they're using magnetic levitation bearings, and multiple wheels to provide sufficient storage and also balance out the gyro forces.

Cars?

[dotancohen]

Cars? You kids want to use cars to drag your stinking electricity all over the neighborhood? When I was your age, I'd carry two buckets of electricity, uphill in the snow both ways.

Now get off my lawn.

Peer to peer networks typically suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something can be done doesn't mean it makes any sense to actually do it.

I want someone to explain to me how this is better than building large power storage units near existing substations or by constructing dedicated energy storage plants?

The reason peaker plants have not been replaced is very very simple. The technology currently does not exist to implement in a manner with even a resemblance of cost effectiveness.

Like it or not the real work on this planet gets done by large centralized systems and for good reason.

Stupid idea

[allanj]

So, apparently we need a complicated system of grid feeding substations (electric cars, in this article) to help keep the grid working. Here's another idea - the utilities could do THEIR job a little better, and this vast infrastructure change will be irrelevant. How do they handle solar, wind and similar at the moment? Another issue is that overall power quality will degrade with too many cheap substations feeding energy with uncontrollable amounts of reactive power into the grid. Sure this can be handled, but only at considerable cost to the installation you need in your home. That is one the reasons utilities would rather keep your excess wind, solar, hydro or other such energy sources off their precious grid, and will settle for your consumption to be really low. Handling that situation would require substantial investments on the side of the utilities - not exactly what they are known to love.

Thought this may be a good idea

[shicaca]

I was thinking to myself, "Maybe they're talking about solar cars!" (Charge your car completely and THEN put excess on the grid or something along those lines)

Nope.

Why the heck would I want to plug my car in to provide the electric company a service that could potentially, worst case scenario, hose my battery/car by overloading it (not enough cars to handle the load plugged in at one particular time), or by even depleting perhaps enough of my battery to screw me royally when I get in a traffic jam that was unforeseeable in my future? No thanks. I'll keep my 100% charge thankyouverymuch. Until the power companies start paying me for MY services, they can go to ... well you know where.

Re:Thought this may be a good idea

[dangitman]

Until the power companies start paying me for MY services, they can go to

Uhhh... isn't that the point? You get paid for the electricity you feed back into the system.

Re:Thought this may be a good idea

[shicaca]

From the article:

"Kempton estimates the value for utilities could be up to $4,000 a year for the service, part of which could be paid to drivers."

Could being the key word. I guess I should have said, "If and WHEN I get paid for it we'll talk, until then the power companies can ......."

It's just like when I was still in HS and solar energy cells for houses were first hitting the big market and everyone was talking it up like it was something great. "It makes your electricity meter go backwards in low-usage times!" (and) "You get paid for the excess if you make excess!" What they forget to mention is that nearly every single electric company since the introduction of this technology had first embraced, then completely denounced solar cell usage by not allowing these folks to receive stipends for energy THEY produced. There's, from what I'm hearing, only a select few that give you breaks on your bill per month for generating electricity FOR them.

I guess what I'm saying is "COULD" is definitely not "WILL" and I'm assuming it's going to be a mere pittance if anything at all since it's "up to $4,000 a year ... PART of which could be paid to drivers."

Re:Thought this may be a good idea

[dangitman]

What they forget to mention is that nearly every single electric company since the introduction of this technology had first embraced, then completely denounced solar cell usage by not allowing these folks to receive stipends for energy THEY produced.

In most civilized countries they have to pay you for that extra capacity by law. Anyway, how are they going to force you to hook your car up to the grid? The only way they are going to get you to do that is by paying you.

Re:Thought this may be a good idea

[shicaca]

I guess what my first comment was trying to say is this: They've not come up with their promises for other technology placing loads on their networks (solar), and if you have to plug your car in to charge it, I'm pretty sure nobody would be forcing you to do that. *I* just will not help with their "problems" until I *am* given $$, and from what they made it sound like, you have the option of pushing it into the (insert acronym) mode ... thus if they don't specifically state, "We'll pay you 'x' amount", then I'll just put my car in charge mode and call it a day.

My point: Electric companies don't pay for energy produced via our domestic solar cells, even though it puts power on THEIR grid to sell to other customers, and therefor I highly doubt they'd do anything different for this. If you live in an area where you are paid for your solar energy, I'd like to hear about it because nearly every TV show that they place solar panels on the houses they consistently 99.99% of the time say, "Well this area's electric co doesn't pay for excess used, so ......" I've never once heard them say they DO pay for your excess since I've been in HS, and you don't really hear of that many people saying that this is one of the nice benefits of the tech ... it's because it honestly doesn't happen anymore.

PS- I'm really done debating with you on this one.

Of couse bill calculation will be done by utility

[ls671]

You loose energy when storing/retrieving energy to batteries, so here is a possible use case:

1) You leave for a 1 year trip around the world, leaving your car hooked up to the grid.
2) When you get back a bill awaits you. Have you left your car unplugged, you would have saved that bill.

The bill would read :

Energy stored to your system: 10345 Kwh
Energy retrieved from your system: 8978 Kwh
Total to pay: 1367 Kwh
Thank you for letting us use your system and charge you for that!

It's like if you were running a bank with a safe that spills money into the sewer, not a very nice business model to be into ;-)

Because

[Chrisq]

Possibly your regular commute is less than irregular trips you take at weekends, holidays, etc. You need to be able to have a 400 mile range, but 60 miles will do you on a regular day.

Re:Because

[darthflo]

My $5 alarm clock can store different alarm times for weekdays and the weekend. A $25k car should, IMO, be very able to let you tell it to never be below 25% on weekdays, never be below 80% on weekends and make sure to be fully charged next friday.
With a bit of sync magic and the ever rising penetration of calendar/mobile phone syncing you mightn't even have to specifically tell it about the long holiday trip. Change is fast in the tech industry and often even faster in the mobile tech industry, don't underestimate that.

Some (nearly) facts...

[DamonHD]

Well, there's been a lot of heat and little light so far...

I've actually been exchanging emails with the UK's National Grid on a very similar topic: if I add some extra batteries to a grid-tie/UPS solar PV system, are they interested in it for frequency/fast standby support? Nominally I could automatically switch it on in one cycle to pump back at maximum for 30 minutes or more, which meets several of their key requirements. (See towards bottom of this page: http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity.html under From Net-Zero Electricity to Negative-Carbon.)

So, I'd get paid for the electricity AND for providing a standby service to help grid stability.

1) Even if you don't cycle batteries they still have a finite life: use them or loose them.

2) You could easily set your system so that if the batteries are below 90% charge you won't support the grid: you'd hardly ever notice diminished capacity and you'd still be able to make a significant stability and peak-shaving contribution, and you'd also avoid deep-cycling for the grid which would wear them out faster.

3) You avoid frying linespeople in a power cut with a system approved to G83/1 or similar: this is old tech.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Some (nearly) facts...

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1) Even if you don't cycle batteries they still have a finite life: use them or loose them.

How do they become not tight if not used? Are you trying to say that they start leaking? That isn't always true.

mobile UPS

[speculatrix]

hey, great, my car is now a mobile uninterruptable power supply, so if there's a threat of a power outage taking out my home computers, I have to make sure I rush home and plug the car in!

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[GuldKalle]

Except it would read:

Energy stored to your system: 10345 kWh * 0.19 $/kWh = 1965.60 $
Energy retrieved from your system: 8978 kWh *0.39 $/kWh = 3501.40 $
Total to pay: -1535.8 $

Because electricity is cheaper at when the demand is low.

It might work....

[nyonix]

... But you would need better batteries, smaller, higher capacity and life cycle, power plugs in every parking lot, or some greater advancements in wireless power. Anyway it would be a way to make cars more useful then they are now, 99% of time a dead weight.

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[ls671]

With current demand, this is true. This model wouldn't work on a large scale. Everybody would be buying current cheap to charge their battery banks in order to sell high, creating demand around the clock, eliminating the off-peak period.

On a large scale, it is like inventing money, it doesn't work.

Nowadays, most people selling to the grid get their current from wind and solar, not from batteries they charge at night.

Of course utility companies would have to put up some incentive for you to let them use your batteries, meaning they buy a little higher than they sell but I would advice watching closely how they will do the math.

I spend 0.120 KWh everyday just to keep my 6KWh battery bank at float voltage with no current draw. It is used only on power failures. Cost of lost energy would be higher with deep discharges/recharges

So my bill currently looks like this:

Energy stored to your system = 0.120 * 365 * 0.19 = 8.32$
Energy retrieved from your system: 0

I do not view how this could be good for the consumer. I view a great advantage for the utilities although if they market it well. Hence my first post. Think about consumers with old/bad batteries that waste even more on charging, what if you need to charge during peak-rates, etc...

As always the problem is cost

[BlueParrot]

If it wasn't for the cost it is perfectly possible to build plants that use biomass, hydroelectric, nuclear etc... that can rapidly adjust their power output. Hydroelectric plants can change their output close to instantly, for plants using turbines it is just a matter of how rapidly you can adjust the turbine speed, and while the most efficient turbines can only be adjusted slowly, you could easily use a few plants at slightly lower efficiency for load balancing ( as is done in many gas fired plants ). Heck, even gigawatt-class nuclear plants can drop the rate of their chain reaction by 90% within seconds, likewise it can increase it.

So why isn't this done? Well, simply put it is all about cost. A large power plant is an expensive investment so you would prefer using it at maximum output to get the best return. The turbines that can rapidly adjust their speed are also less efficient than the ones that can't. So essentially, for electric storage for load balancing to be worth it, it will have to be cheaper than the cost of running a power plant at less than maximum power output. If batteries could achieve this the electric utilities would have already installed lots of them, optimized for the purpose. A big fat stack of batteries connected to a single DC - AC converter could utilize economies of scale, weight and size wouldn't be an issue so they could be optimized differently than batteries for cars, and unlike a million electric cars scattered around, it could be relatively easily synchronized with existing plants without upgrading the entire grid.

So bottom of the line, if the utilities don't consider this to be worth it using for-the-purpose optimized batteries that exploit economies of scale, it is unlikely to be economical using batteries optimized for a car.

Re:Ariba!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's ask Peter North!! He knows all about massive loads!!! Certainly more than the average slashdot reader...

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[Anonymous Coward]

On a large scale, it is like inventing money, it doesn't work.

Yeah, we all know what a horrible idea that crackpot invention out to be.

Gentlemen, start your soldering irons!

[GameboyRMH]

Well so far all the points on why this is a very very bad idea have been well-discussed:

- Safety: is the power REALLY off?
- Car battery life
- Not having a charge when you need it
- Having your wallet gangbanged by the energy companies

This idea is so horrible, so disadvantageous to the average Joe...expect it to be mandated by your government. I'm looking forward to owning an electric car someday, so much so that I'll happily modify my car's charging adapter so that I'll have the option to disable this "feature"

Re:human-powered

[Migraineman]

An average person is worth about 1/10 hp (75W) on an exercise bike, with the ability to peak up to about 1/4 hp (187W). Folks who are properly trained can do better, but I wouldn't expect your inmate population to fall in the "elite athlete" category. So how many people are currently incarcerated in the US? At the end of 2006, it was slightly more than 2.26 million people. Let's assume you can coax 1/2 of the prisoner population to voluntarily participate. Let's ask for two 2-hour shifts, and schedule for 24-hour operation. That'll require six "teams" of pedalers, resulting in a net population divisor of 12. (75 W per person) * (2.26M persons) * (1/12 participation) = 14.125 MW.

The last time I checked, the local landfill was running a 50 MW generator off the garbage-gas. I don't think the prisoner-generator will contribute enough ... unless you put a lot more people in prison. Hey! There's the solution!

A question

[ko9]

How is this different from http://www.google.org/recharge/ which I read a while ago? Seems like it's pretty much the same project.. But maybe there are subtle but important differences that I'm overlooking?

It's like distributed computing...

[argent]

The idea is that if people have these batteries in their cars *anyway*, why not take advantage of them?

why not to allow businessmen to make engr decision

[conspirator57]

Transmission line loss. This will kill this idea.

Don't think this will catch on

[jvkjvk]

In addition to technological issues involved (battery fatigue, grid coupling, etc.), how many people are going to be willing to gamble this way with their means of transportation?

It's like having a $random amount of gas in your car every day and (here's the kicker) not being able to top it off quickly. Now, many people people would never be caught by this, as they "never" drive more than 20 miles a day or something. Never say "never".

For many other people all it takes is the supposition that there could be a time where they unexpectedly need a car but don't have one that is juiced enough. Then, there will be those adopters who actually do get bit by this issue, to greater or lesser degrees.

I suppose that this could get more people to plan their lives out - putting their car "on system" or off depending on what they expect to do the next day but I certainly wouldn't count on it.

1.21GW @ 88MPH

[Mr Z]

Never mind that it's spelled gigawatts, and that watts specifies a rate of consumption of energy (power), rather than amount of energy. You can't store gigawatts. You can only store gigawatt-hours (or other suitable unit that comes down to energy, as opposed to power).

:-)

Dam your own rivers, Californians

[Anonymous Coward]

Oregon is tired of supplying California with electricity. Tell Californians to dam their own damn rivers, and rape their own natural resources. Oregonians want to keep our land clean, pure and dam-free.

Re:Dam your own rivers, Californians

[Technician]

I don't normaly feed the troll, but...

Oregon is tired of supplying California with electricity.

Oregon is not tired of collecting money from California. There fixed it for you.

I would never use it

[Mike_ya]

While half the range would be good enough to make it through the day I would never chance having half a charge if I could help it. You never know when the shit will hit the fan like it did several years ago for me.

Driving to work with about a third of a tank of gas I received a call that most of my immediate family was in a major car accident, an experience I would wish on no one. For that day this led to a lot of driving between hospitals, homes and the garage where they took the car.

At some point I had to stop for gas. Pumping the gas I was standing there numb as one usually is in that situation, but I was also irritated that I had to 'waste' time on that day putting petro in the car. From that day on I have never let the gauge get to half a tank.

A crisis like that is relatively rare, but I would rather have a full tank/charge then have to deal with pumping/charging my vehicle when there are more important things to be dealing with.

Re:I would never use it

[evilviper]

That entire scenario would have gone quite differently if charging stations started appearing all over. Major airports tend to have several spots for electric vehicles. If major Hospitals did as well, you'd have wasted just a few seconds, instead, swiping a credit card, and plugging your car in.

using people as batteries

[peter303]

Human beings generate about one watt per kilo of weight. You could plug us while we were sleeping.

(What if some evil power kept us sleeping and plugged in all the time?)

Re:using people as batteries

[lord merlin]

Neat Idea. I think you should call it "The Matrix". Oh, wait....

Actually, bigger problem...

[Leuf]

Okay so they want to put power in your car at night and then take it out at various times during the day. One rather large problem with that... at night your car is at home in your garage. During the day your car is in a parking lot at your place of work. So unless everyone has their own personal parking spot with an electric hookup you've got this huge battery reservoir at night that drops to probably 1/4 the capacity during the day.

let's get some facts straight

[loshwomp]

Disclaimer: I worked on some of the software in the vehicle mentioned in the article. The article was a little light on technical details. Dr. Kempton is much more qualified to comment with respect to V2G technology, but I'll try to preemptively clear a few things up, here.

Why would I let the big bad utility company wear out my expensive battery?

Because they'd pay you more than enough to make it worthwhile. The details of the business model are undefined, but as TFA explains, there is a lot of money on the table (at least $4K/year), so there is considerable financial incentive to put a fleet of vehicles to use. The basic idea is that a vehicle owner would sign on with an aggregator, who would control a fleet (thousands or hundreds of thousands of vehicles) and sell regulation services to the utilities at the megawatt level. It could be that you'd lease your battery from the aggregator.

The most-valuable proposition is called ancillary services. Very simplistically, in this model you're not really moving much energy; you're really just selling the availability to provide fast-reacting regulation. Grid operation is a giant, complicated balancing act -- balancing generation with load.

Right now the balancing is done by ramping generator output up and down. As greater amounts of solar and wind make their way into the power mix, generators will end up doing even more regulation. Unfortunately, generators are generally least efficient and most polluting when ramping, so a fleet of vehicles that can provide small amounts of regulation within milliseconds is extremely attractive to grid operators.

But what if the utility company drains my battery when I need it for that long trip?

Obviously the system would have to be designed to take your individual driving needs into account. The good thing is that it doesn't really matter what you do as an individual -- the statistical behavior of the fleet as a whole remains predictable.

Furthermore, with a sufficiently large fleet of vehicles, it's possible to provide all the necessary regulation just by charging. If a vehicle is charging at 10kW, but is capable of charging at 20kW, then it can adjust its power up or down by 10kW, subject only to the constraint that it needs to be full by morning (or whenever). I've seen estimates by people more knowledgeable than I that we could regulate all of California with a fleet on the order of hundreds of thousands of EVs.

If you're doing all your regulation via charging, then you can't claim you're wearing out your battery prematurely (unless you were never planning to charge it again, of course).

Re:let's get some facts straight

[dy_dx]

I'm a little confused on your point that regulation could work "just by charging"... Wouldn't that only work if all the EVs were already part of the baseline load? How would charging at 5kW be regulating load down when I was charging at 0kW (not 10kW) before with my trusty non-grid-connected gasoline engine?

All EVs would be incremental load from where we are today. One of the arguments that many EV enthusiasts make is that you can add a huge number of EVs to the road without adding any new baseline load because most charging would occur at off-peak times. My question is which benefit will we see - low up-front infrastructure costs because we won't have to build any new power plants? Or huge savings because we get to use V2G after we build the costly new power plants to bring up baseline load? I'm all for progress in EVs, and I'm glad people like you are pushing the envelope. I just find it frustrating when many proponents make the seemingly circular argument of claiming both of these benefits...

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[slazzy]

I think the consumer would need to have some kind of control panel where they can set the difference in price (between day and night etc) they are willing to accept. This would obviously have to be at least high enough to pay for the cost of charging/discharging the system. Only if the price the utility was willing to pay was high enough would the batter then be allowed to be used.

Insightful?

[p3d0]

Tell your car's charger you never want it less than 80% full. Problem solved.

Stop overreacting - we're talking twice a year

[indros13]

There's only a handful of times each year that all the power plants a utility owns are operating at full capacity. In the U.S., that's a hot summmer day in the late afternoon. Businesses are still open and residents are coming home to crank up the A/C.

V2G would be operated on the same philosophy as Xcel Energy's Savers Switch plan that allows the utility to turn off your A/C for 10 minutes on the hottest summer day in exchange for a lower bill. The drain on your battery will be minimal, infrequent, and generally unnoticeable.

In the aggregate, however, the power company may be able to avoid building a new power plant, so the cost savings are substantial. That's why they're willing to pay you to turn off (or plug in) in this infrequent situation. And why this idea is a brilliant way to help the grid and have zero point-source pollution when you drive.

Natural Gas Lines and Hydrogen

[YetAnotherBob]

I have a problem with your statement that existing natural gas lines are not suitable for hydrogen.

"Natual gas" is a mixture of methane (70 to 80%) and hydrogen (10 to 20%) with admixtures of other hydrocarbons, plus some waste gasses (water, CO2, Helium, nigrogen, other stuff that doesn't burn). The H2S they put into natural gas systems here in the US is so you can smell a leak. That is not there when they take it out of the ground. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is added to the gas as a safety measure.

I know about the hydrogen content because I worked on a methane recovery system for coal mines once. The methane had to be cleaned up to remove/reduce oxygen, nitrogen and CO2. Then, they had to 'sweeten' the methane. (Standard natural gas has a higher BTU rating than pure methane.) There was a plant in Kentucky that produced hydrogen from methane to do the sweetening. So they piped the methane to Ky from W Va, then sold it to the gas pipelines after it was sweetened. The plant in Ky has been in operation since the 1950's. It's not a new idea.

Saying that gas lines that today handle low concentrations of hydrogen cannot handle hydrogen just doesn't seem right to me. Will there be leakage? sure. But, how much? the system can handle some leakage. There is a small amount of leakage today. We manage to deal with it.

There is leakage in every fuel dispensing system. About 25% of all the electricity generated is lost due to line impedances. Where does it go? just drive under a power line while listening to the radio. Lots gets lost as heat also. Yet we don't abandon electricity.

Gasoline evaporation has become a big concern in the last few years. We've added vapor recovery to the fuel tanks, and to the pumps at a lot of stations. 25 years ago, evaporation just happened. The world didn't end. (At least not quite, according to Mr. Gore.) Even with all the vapor recovery systems if you leave your car on blocks for a year with a full tank, see if the tank is still full after the year. Vapors are very hard to perfectly contain. Yet we still use gasoline.

The issue isn't if there is leakage, it's how much there is. The lines are a poor storage device, but a good delivery system. The hydrogen leakage over a couple of days is miniscule. Just don't expect to store it there for a long time.

By the way, I don't know of any really good long term storage for hydrogen gas. The best I've seen seems to be metal hydrides. just heat them to get the gas back. There will still be losses. The question is "Are they significant?"

There is still a lot of work to do on the whole hydrogen idea. The biggest hole righ now is generation of the gas. That's the real reason why we aren't on a hydrogen system. I saw work by a man named Billings done in the 1970's for DOE. He had a fleet of hydrogen cars. People were using them to commute up to 70 miles each way, each day. Gave up on cryo tanks. settled on metal hydrides. They made a better tank (more range, safer, shorter/simpler fillups). He even had Detroit interested for a while. What killed it was hydrogen generation. There just isn't any good long term supply. Using gasoline was half the fuel cost for the drivers.

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[ls671]

Agreed this was the reason of my first post. Since most consumers aren't the geek type, there is good chances they will loose. First, how are you going to calculate the energy losses, it depends on your battery age, on your charger, on the rate and depth of discharge, etc., just too many parameters to keep track of for an average consumer on a regular basis. As an example, I said that it costs me 0.120KWh every day to keep my battery bank at float voltage but I forgot to calculate the heat lost at the charger level since I only measure what I put in the batteries in my setup, not the real current I draw from the utility company ;-) There goes my profit if I forget to measure that correctly while dealing with the utility company ;-(

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[Anonymous Coward]

> You loose energy when storing/retrieving energy to batteries, so here is a possible use case:

What do you mean by loose energy? Are you saying it isn't tight? I've never heard that slang. What do you mean?

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody would be buying current cheap to charge their battery banks in order to sell high, creating demand around the clock, eliminating the off-peak period...it doesn't work

That's the entire point, which you obviously missed. By reducing the amount of power the power companies have to provide during peak periods and increasing the nonpeak power, you drastically reduce the cost per kwh. The power savings get passed to the customer in the form of the peak/off-peak prices.

cycle cost

[epine]

Is anyone here factoring into all this the "cycle cost" of the batteries themselves? Most bottled electricity technologies (excepting supercaps) have a finite number of charge cycles before an expensive replacement/refurbish is required. It can depend on strange parameters such as the depth of the discharge, or relative frequency of deep discharge cycles.

How will it be handled when the power company cycles someone's fancy new battery pack into the recycle bin in under a month because a controller glitch caused them to change the charge/discharge direction twice an hour in one obscure subdivision?

Re:Of couse bill calculation will be done by utili

[ls671]

I don't think so, it would be more profitable and much more efficient for the utility companies to install their own battery banks or flywheels. The only way they are going to use customer batteries (less efficient solution) is if they can make more money that way, not less money. Since the system would be inefficient, I do not view how it could be profitable BOTH for the industry and the customers, industry usually win.

V2G vs. infrastructure

[loshwomp]

I'm a little confused on your point that regulation could work "just by charging"... Wouldn't that only work if all the EVs were already part of the baseline load? How would charging at 5kW be regulating load down when I was charging at 0kW (not 10kW) before with my trusty non-grid-connected gasoline engine?

I'm not sure how else to explain it. A car capable of 20kW (but charging at 5kW) can provide up to 15kW of regulation down, or 5kW of regulation up. Your gas car is always zero load, and has zero regulation capacity. These are basically the definitions of regulation up and regulation down.

One of the arguments that many EV enthusiasts make is that you can add a huge number of EVs to the road without adding any new baseline load because most charging would occur at off-peak times.

No; the benefit is that you don't need to add additional peaking generation and infrastructure. Look at this graph of the real-time load in California:
www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html

On a hot summer afternoon, the load (red line) will approach the available generation (green line), at which point all available generation is online. Adding more generation would require building more generators, and eventually more infrastructure (transmission lines, etc.). Fortunately, most EV charging fits into the valley on the left of the graph (in the middle of the night) -- we can literally add millions of EVs over there, without any infrastructure upgrades.

My question is which benefit will we see - low up-front infrastructure costs because we won't have to build any new power plants? Or huge savings because we get to use V2G after we build the costly new power plants to bring up baseline load?

Yes on the first; the second isn't really correct. EV charging profiles (i.e. mostly scheduled at night) mean we won't need new infrastructure for a long time, but that has nothing to do with V2G.

For V2G and regulation, let's go back to my car -- it can vary its charge between 0 and 20kW. That means a fleet of 1000 cars can superimpose a 0-20megawatt signal on top of the CalISO load graph above. By doing so, we can avoid having to do the same thing with generators as they balance generation with load -- highly desirable because generators are inefficient and dirty when they're ramping up and down. (We still need to add generation as load increases, of course -- but we can do it in larger, more-optimal steps, leaving the fine-grained balancing act to the vehicle fleet.) This is the basic idea behind "ancillary services" and it's where the money is on the table right now.

Hope this helps at least a little.

Heavy batteries

[The Conductor]

I've thought about this, and can think of two possible solutions. First is a standardized battery geometry that bolts in from underneath. To change the battery you drive over a pit, like for an oil change. Battery units would be leased on a subscription basis, so the risk of poor battery condition is spread out. I don't think the soda-pop bottle deposit model, nor the propane cylinder exchange model would work very well since the batteries are very expensive compared to their content of energy; the supplier would be hit by Gresham's Law. The second approach is to rent a battery trailer (or gas-powered generator) that plugged into a standard connector on the rear bumper. Recharge stations wouldn't require special equipment, and any ol' gas station can get in the business, but it is more cumbersome for the consumer. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, an electric vehicle can be set up for both.