<story><title>Texas Power Prices Briefly Surpass $9k Amid Scorching Heat</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/searing-texas-heat-pushes-power-prices-to-near-record-levels</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaroth</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s over ~$750 for the power stored in a single Tesla battery pack. Not that the cars are capable of back-feeding the grid (V2G), unfortunately, nor is the infrastructure in place to pull from them in times like this...&lt;p&gt;It sure seems like if we&amp;#x27;re going to have millions of these 100kWh batteries plugged in, all nicely geographically distributed and internet connected, it would be swell if the owners could set a price at which they would be willing to sell their energy. It would just add another way that EVs are better than ICE cars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>monkeynotes</author><text>This sparks an interesting discussion around &amp;#x27;what if we all had EVs&amp;#x27;. Texas would not be the only place struggling to meet demand. If everyone is fueling their cars with electricity, demand is going to be high in all cities.&lt;p&gt;Without fossil fuels we need to find new sources for power. It&amp;#x27;s not good enough to say &amp;#x27;electricity&amp;#x27;, how do you generate it at a capacity that fills in for the 20.5 million barrels of oil consumed a day in the USA?&lt;p&gt;The numbers are interesting. There is 17500 kw&amp;#x2F;h or 1.7 mw&amp;#x2F;h in a barrel of oil. Using 20.5m barrels a day, that&amp;#x27;s 34.85 million mw&amp;#x2F;h a day. The US currently generates around 10 million mw&amp;#x2F;h of electricity a day[1].&lt;p&gt;Granted, a fraction of a barrel of oil is used for gasoline, but you can see that the grid will need a sizeable upgrade if it is to fill in for our dependency on oil.&lt;p&gt;Please forgive me if I have some of this wrong!&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_electrici...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Texas Power Prices Briefly Surpass $9k Amid Scorching Heat</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/searing-texas-heat-pushes-power-prices-to-near-record-levels</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaroth</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s over ~$750 for the power stored in a single Tesla battery pack. Not that the cars are capable of back-feeding the grid (V2G), unfortunately, nor is the infrastructure in place to pull from them in times like this...&lt;p&gt;It sure seems like if we&amp;#x27;re going to have millions of these 100kWh batteries plugged in, all nicely geographically distributed and internet connected, it would be swell if the owners could set a price at which they would be willing to sell their energy. It would just add another way that EVs are better than ICE cars.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nradov</author><text>Over time it might be more practical for EV manufacturers to take back decommissioned vehicles and install the battery packs in centralized facilities for grid storage and stabilization. That would avoid the need for expensive and complex grid connection equipment in individual EVs. Even if the reused batteries are down to 60% capacity, stacking a bunch of them could deliver enough power for demand spikes.</text></comment>