Your Future Home Might Be Powered By Car Batteries (bloomberg.com)

Increasingly utilities and automakers are wondering if they could use the batteries inside electric cars as storage for the entire public power grid. An anonymous reader shares a report: The idea, known as "vehicle-to-grid," is to someday have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours or when the sun simply isn't shining. If it works -- and it's a big if -- renewable energy could get much cheaper and more widely used. "We really, really need storage in order to make better use of wind and solar power, and electric cars could provide it," said Daniel Brenden, an analyst who studies the electricity market at BMI Research in London. "The potential is so huge." Today, fewer than one percent of the world's vehicles are electric, but by 2040 more than half of all new cars will run on the same juice as televisions, computers and hair dryers, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Once cars and everything else are fed from the same source, they can share the same plumbing.

Comments

Take the car away

[iTrawl]

I thought they made a car specifically for this use pattern. And they took away the car and called what was left the "Powerwall". Sure, you stick it to a wall rather than ambulate it all over town, but I think it works out just fine.

Re:Take the car away

[ShanghaiBill]

The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.

My wife has a Tesla with a 240 mile range, and on 95% of days she uses less than 20% of the capacity. The rest could be available for energy price arbitrage.

The car starts charging at 2 am, when electricity prices are lowest. The power companies need to fill the gap from 4pm to 7pm when power use peaks, but solar is fading.

Re:Take the car away

[91degrees]

We've seen this before. Early home appliances had interchangable motors, because motors were expensive. You'd buy a motor and plug it into different gadgets. And traction engines were used as jack-of-all-trades farm power sources. More recently there was an idea that a single computer would control the home.

What actually happened was motors, motive power and CPUs got cheap enough that the benefits to having several motors, engines or computers outweighed the inconvenience, and in some cases are outsourced (e.g. Alexa).

I imagine the powerwall will become so cheap that it will become viable for power companies to simply have a bank of them for stored power.

Re: Take the car away

[shilly]

Hence the powerwall

Re: Take the car away

[rmdingler]

A powerwall designed specifically to store and discharge energy to offset peak usage is also going to be more practical to market, since electric car owners would understandably be concerned about the number of charge/discharge cycles their batteries could sustain before needing replacement.

Re:Take the car away

[rhsanborn]

Not to mention that, at the moment, batteries are very specific to a particular car, which happens to be one of the largest capital investments a family can make. What kind of life-cycle degradation can we expect from the car being a base-load for the house? I'd hate to be reducing the life-expectancy of the car because it was used floating the house. I have a feeling a pack dedicated to the purpose would be better suited to the task, and much less expensive to replace when it wears out (as opposed to taking apart the car). It also doesn't fit the use case for most families. The house-supporting battery pack will need to supply most of it's power at night, but that's when the family is expecting the car to be charging to the next day's commute. When the house or grid is at full renewable production, your car is most likely sitting in a lot at work somewhere.

Re: Take the car away

[AmiMoJo]

The other big issue with V2G is that it needs to use much more complex charging hardware. The current offerings in Norway only work on CHAdeMO, for example.

I think it's more likely that people will use recycled car batteries in a PowerWall type product. There won't be a shortage of them from cars written off for other issues, and most of those packs will have a huge amount of life left in them.

Re:Take the car away

[bluefoxlucid]

The Powerwall costs extra money, but you will already have your car battery, so there is no additional capital cost other than an inverter.

Yep. It makes sense from a capex standpoint; not sure if it makes sense overall. Those batteries degrade with charge-discharge cycle, and the constant cycling could shift the expense of storage directly onto the consumer--a regressive tax when we have enough electric cars (i.e. they're just cars regular folks have), since rich people don't have N cars for N*x income where x is the income of a single-car family.

Batteries are the wrong tech for city-grade storage; and distributed batteries are the kind of fancy talk people sell to uneducated laymen (the power still has to travel all the way from the power station to the battery and the endpoint; and the battery array will create a potential difference without complex BMS across the whole grid, cross-charging; and labor to maintain the battery has to travel to the fault site). CAES is much cheaper, and recouperating adiabatic CAES is theoretically 100% efficient but in practice only about 90%, which is better than batteries.

Unfortunately, people keep trying to cheat: rather than build a large underground tank, the last two US plants were cited with large underground caverns. Those caverns were porous sandstone and failed.

One day, I want to see a large inconel chamber built for a heat engine. With operating temperatures above 1,800 degrees, you can sink that right into a 1,600 degree magma chamber to build a geothermal power station. That will be much more interesting.

Re: Take the car away

[bobbied]

Lose your job, you die. That's how capitalism works.

LOL... Well, nice try. I lost my job for 6 months just as the 2000 down turn started and my youngest was born (and subsequently was hospitalized for complications) AND my former employer sued me.

My family and I didn't starve, though we did draw unemployment (After it was initially denied). The mortgage got paid, food was on the table AND my legal fees where all paid.

How was that possible?

Simple. I was raised to be responsible for me and my family and I had savings and little debt (nothing but the mortgage) so we could live on next to nothing. THIS is how a capitalist manages his finances so he doesn't starve. Plus, I COULD have had a job doing all sorts of menial tasks, mopping floors, making fast food etc.

So I contend that capitalism doesn't kill you, but lack of financial discipline and planning and lack of willingness to work sure can. However, in this country, nobody need starve to death. There are plenty of ways to feed yourself and your family in the USA.

Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

This is silly. Battery technology hasn't matured so workarounds like this aren't really solving any problems. By the time there was widespread adoption of this (my guess 5-10 years) technology will have moved on and the issues we think are a big deal will be different.

Seems dubious

[Gavagai80]

The average age of a car on the road in the USA is 11.5 years. Personally, I drive a 1998. If only 50% of new cars in 2040 will be electric, then we're looking at sometime between 2050 and 2060 for a slight majority of cars on the road to be electric. So this plan had better work with a fairly small percentage of cars being electric, or it'll come way too late to do any good.

A better use of electric cars may be simply using their depleted otherwise-worthless batteries as part of the grid. That way you don't have to convince people to let their battery be worn down, either -- getting people to allow their car battery to be used to balance the grid will really require that they be getting free replacement batteries, because it can't be good for battery longevity.

Re:Build the base first, then expand

[thegarbz]

Let's first of all finish inventing the storage before we ponder spending the energy.

Lets not. If we spend our lives waiting for perfection before starting anything then we will never get anything done.

Why?

[DeathToBill]

I can't believe people still think this is a good idea. These people still don't seem to have spotted that the reason you plug your car in is so that it's fully charged when you want to go somewhere. So in ten years' time, you'll hear this conversation:

"Quick! My waters have broken! Get me to the hospital!"

"Wait, no, sorry, can't go, it's been cloudy all week and the grid's left our car with only 30 miles range. Can you hold it for an hour until it's charged enough?"

Re:Why?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

A car with ~200 mile range is going to have a ~50 kWh battery. My home uses ~2-3 kWh overnight. So by using the energy of a fully charged car overnight once, I am still at a 188-192 mile range. How's that a problem? Do you run a steel mill at home or something?

Re:Build the base first, then expand

[Opportunist]

I'm not talking about perfection, I'm talking about knowing whether we're putting our money on the right horse. Right now, energy driven cars seem to be the future, but we don't even know what kind of energy storage is the best. When it comes to energy density, the ICE and petrol are still superior to other forms on a pure power-per-kg level. We should first of all figure out how to replace this, and what to replace that with, before we start planning a whole house around it only to discover that eventually we'll start over from scratch.

Re:Too much hype...

[Mashiki]

400v isn't dangerous though, it's the amperage that's behind the 400v that's dangerous. You can go and get hit with 10,000-50,000v right now pull the wire off a spark plug on any car, it'll hurt but it won't kill you even if it's grounded through you to the earth. Low amp, high voltage. But, you can kill yourself off the starter motor which can draw upwards of 300-900amps from that 12v battery. Haven't even started with home 1ph-120v, or 3ph-208v used in industry.

Country dependant

[DrYak]

In some country, petrol IS NOT the thing stations profit the most.

At least in several places in Europe, stations profit the most from their shops (selling snacks and other small useful item. At a high price than in the city, but more convenient or in an emergency, as they are open 24h and on your way on the highway) and their cafe (taking breaks is heavily recommended by massive campaign and even legally required in some driver professions)
In fact several chain of stations are actually owned by chain stores.

The petrol is mostly use as a way to attract people to the shops/cafes.

As soon as electrical cars became a thing some stations started to install charging station as a way to attract even more customer to the shops and cafes.

Re:Country dependant

[Mashiki]

That's true in most countries. The profit margin at most stations is pennies per/L, in Canada it's around 0.02-0.045/L. The US? Most stations make around 0.10-0.25/Gal. Thing is, here in Canada we have those charging stations in places like that and they don't draw people in. People simply leave their cars and fuck it up for everyone else. When it takes 30min-2hrs for a charge instead of 8mins for a fillup, you can already see the problems. In Ontario, if we had massive numbers of electric vehicles most small stations would need 40-100 bays to recharge. Distances are too large, the same in the US. Unlike Europe, people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america.

An example: A person living in London, Ontario would spend 2.5-3hr/one way to commute to Toronto. It's cheaper to drive, then take the train or live in the surrounding communities(Brampton/Mississauga/etc where a starter home can be $1.4m+) in the GTA for most people, unless you're making a combined income over $150k/year. Even at that, you're going to find times where you're under that 60-day lose your job and lose your home. Even at that, you're probably considering finding a new place to live because you're being priced out of your own neighborhood. Another example, I was looking at house prices in Woodstock, Ontario. A house built in 1810, that is under 1600sqft(148sqm) with knob & tube wiring, galvanized pipes, maybe windows from the 1940's(single pane w/winter storm windows that have to be attached). Were running in the $340k range, the average income in Woodstock(and the county of Oxford) is around $43k/year.

These ideas are good in high-dense urban areas, anywhere else they fall flat on the realities of the world.

Re:Country dependant

[Oswald McWeany]

As soon as electrical cars became a thing some stations started to install charging station as a way to attract even more customer to the shops and cafes.

And that might bring in some traffic, but most people are going to be recharging from home on their daily commute. Charging walls will never be as popular or bring in as much traffic as petrol pumps did.

Worse yet for these convenience stores, it might be easy for Grocery stores, Department stores like Walmart, etc... to put up charging ports outside their stores - maybe even give free power if you spend over £X ($Y). The fuel station/convenience store concept is long-term doomed in most places. Touristy areas they may survive longer.

Re:Country dependant

[be951]

people being on the road 5-6hrs for a commute is common all across north america

Unless you mean per week, you are way off. Average commute in the U.S. is about 27 minutes (one way). About 7.3% of U.S. workers commute an hour or more each way. For comparison, about 8.5% walk, bike or take public transit (and those groups are not mutually exclusive. About 23% of those with commutes more than an hour use public transportation).

So almost all commuters who drive themselves to work could simply charge at home if they drove an EV. Even current ones with the lowest range (about 58 miles for 2018 Smart Electric) could accommodate most (68%) of commutes, which are 15 miles or less each way according to the U.S Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And other low-ish range options (Fiat 500e @84 miles or Honda Clarity @89 miles) could handle up to about 89% of commutes (about 21% are 16-30 miles, along with the aforementioned 68% that are 15 or less). And there are several other current EV offerings (Leaf, e-Golf, Soul EV, Focus Electric, etc...) with ranges of 110-150 miles, and a few (Teslas and the Bolt) greater than 220 miles.

tl,dr: commuting distance is not a problem for current generation EVs for 90+% of U.S. commuters. (In Canadia, your mileage, or kilometerage, may vary -- and they're actually better according to the slightly dated stats here which says 89% of commutes are 24km or less)

Fly in the ointment

[Solandri]

have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours

Transportation accounts for about 70% as much energy consumption as electricity. If you convert all those ICE cars into EVs, the electric rates won't be cheap during the night when they're charging. Overnight will become the new peak consumption hours, when electricity is most expensive.

Re:Fly in the ointment

[eth1]

have millions of drivers become mini electricity traders, charging up when rates are cheap and pumping energy back into the grid during peak hours

Transportation accounts for about 70% as much energy consumption as electricity. If you convert all those ICE cars into EVs, the electric rates won't be cheap during the night when they're charging. Overnight will become the new peak consumption hours, when electricity is most expensive.

No... If the system is properly designed, with everyone trying to buy low/sell high, and large amounts of storage in cars, there won't BE any peaks/slumps in demand. Not under normal operation, anyway. There's still the "a hurricane's coming, so everyone sets their cars to charge to full and not discharge" type scenarios to deal with. Even then, though, the power prices would spike to the point where a lot of people would probably still want to sell to make a buck.

Don't tell this to my employer.

[LordHighExecutioner]

Or from a "bring your own device" policy, it will rapidly switch to a "bring your own battery" policy to further lower infrastructure costs.

Battery wear

[orzetto]

(Disclaimer: EV owner, researcher in relevant field, and I was once asked to evaluate a research project on V2G in an European country)

The idea is interesting, and may well have an impact in countries with a lot of non-controllable power (wind, sun, but to a degree nuclear and other baseloads too), if price oscillations are large enough. The article mentions a potential of USD 40 a month, which is just above a buck a day. Would you risk not having enough charge in your car to get home for such a pittance?

More importantly, there is no mention of battery wear. Batteries are much more expensive than the energy they store through their lifetime. Teslas have actually a very limited lifetime of about 500 cycles (since the batteries are large, there is no need for more lifetime—it's actually smart to use short-lived, cheaper NCA batteries as Tesla does), which means that, if you assume USD 200 / kWh by 2030, each kWh will cost 40 cents only in battery depreciation: that's a lot more than what the energy costs, and will likely more than offset those 40 USD a month. (Yes, there are longer-lived batteries; they are also more expensive) (Yes, battery wear is not just a matter of cycling, it's also storing at high voltage, rate of charge/discharge at which temperature, and lots of other things)

V2G is very interesting for grid companies as a solution to their energy storage problems, but they seem to intend to exploit the lack of consumer understanding of EV cost dynamics: the real cost of a kWh is the battery wear, not the actual energy. There is a reason why these companies are not buying the batteries directly.

I believe V2G has more potential in "private grid" applications: e.g. if you have a cabin in the woods with no option of grid connection, you could drive to it with you EV and power it from your batteries while you are there (a home uses a lot less power than a car); or you could transfer some charge to a vehicle that ran out of it on the road (actually the Toyota Mirai has a similar feature, a ChaDeMo outlet).

Re:Battery wear

[AmiMoJo]

Teslas have actually a very limited lifetime of about 500 cycles

Incorrect, Tesla use Panasonic cells rated for 3000 cycles.

500 cycles at 250 miles per charge would only be 125,000 miles, which happens to also be the warranty on the packs. Lifetime being a bell curve approximately 50% of packs would qualify for warranty replacement if that was the case. But more over, lots of Tesla cars are up to 200k+, and Tesla tested up to 750k.

Even the original Nissan Leaf has proven to be more durable than that, with taxi firms putting over 200k miles on the original pack without any problems. The newer 30 and 40kWh models might not last so long though.

Re:Full accounting of costs

[MightyYar]

I don't have a powerwall, solar panels, or an electric car. But I could get on board if I had all of those things. Let's say I had a 200-mile range car. My commute is 10 miles. The vast majority of the time, I only need 20 miles of charge - let's double it for safety to 40 miles. That means I'm only using 20% of my battery's capacity. I could see telling the car to go ahead and try to make me some money with the remaining 60% most of the time, overriding this when I know I have a trip or something. The algorithm it uses to "trade" could factor in depreciation and whatnot before deciding to make the transaction.

Re:Build the base first, then expand

[Lost Race]

Right now, energy driven cars seem to be the future,

The suggestion of a possible alternative is intriguing. Please elaborate!

Great Solution / Battery Wear

[foxalopex]

A lot of pure EVs store significantly more power than the average home uses in a day so there's a good chance it can be used to store renewable energy. Even if people can't get renewable power, they're valuable for levelling power use. Part of what keeps electricity costs high is that our power use swings wildly during the day so power systems need to be designed to generate more power than will ever be used.

Also most EV's use the much more reliable LIthium-Iron-Phosphate class batteries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery) which wear out at a much slower rate than most lithiums and rarely if ever catch on fire. Tesla I believe doesn't use these more reliable batteries but the trade-off is the ability to pack more power in a smaller space / weight which is why they have some of the smallest batteries for their incredible capacity on the market.

Re:Build the base first, then expand

[Opportunist]

Dammit, I neglected something that could be nitpicked about.

Physical energy transfer

[nitehawk214]

You could "fill up" your car in one location, drive home, and pump that power in to your local grid. If the local prices were high enough it could be affordable. You could get some sort of "energy truckers", hauling batteries across territory from grid to grid.

That would make things interesting, though I can't imagine it would be terribly efficient. It would encourage companies and governments not to build out proper electrical grids.